

Class._ f Z 


Book_H 1 ?■ 3 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 





V--, fif?^**^** *' ^ t *■ ■ ' . 







*/ 


'VA 


■■ «v’■'M 

f •* ,’,. --i'!,^'.\.:j!i/(i.. .1- K^vVsPI^/<. ' 


»• ■ • .-Y. i-r- ; * i.-^’-tC " i >', " 

■■■ "'^'' ' ■• ‘ ''''■■'S'^' ‘ ■' 

- '• _ •'’■ * T ; ■ , ■' :':M\ -• ■ . 







**'• '' ',^ 1 ;'^’■;f'’tc ’ •" ■ ■■ 

. »^i' »- '*" ■■' f','•’-. l.i*'*. ;■•• ■ ‘^ ■ ^\ -..''J 

■ • - ■:■■ ■ ' 

,.4 ■''••.H 


■ .V 'fNiv-'f .■'V‘•* ., ‘ ■ 


%?; . 


*¥•-: :>'!'• -NvAA’. 


;w' ■'’‘‘^^''=" 0 ’!''■ ' ' '^ ’■ 

■*'' .'•■ .'.‘I'r^'M- ■■ M-v’-’ -.-'v, 



fV 


’ Tt -. 


'V • 


i ; o , ^Miljwti/.JA'*.'.. <^ ./, : ■ V' 


> I 



I . I ^ 




m 


V'-':‘S\ 






'1 ■'■ 


Vi':'::;;-''/ • ■ ' 

■ , "‘’ii '. 52 ^ 


^h: 

iX> V 


■ A 


■/.. 


,-^v..' 


..<• 





<1 '■, .'1 • '^ t*' 


>-A ■ . 


I 





THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


The publishers wish it to be 
understood that nothing in 
this book is intended to re¬ 
fer to real-life persons in the 
Isle of Man or elsewhere. 


tHE WOMAN 
OF KNOCKALOE 

A Parable 

By 

HALL CAINE ' 


“Love is strong as death; jealousy 
is cruel as the grave; . . . Many 
waters cannot quench love, neither 
can the floods drown it. 

^ > 

% 

^ % 0 



NEW YORK 

DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 

1923 

' \ 



COPTEIGHT, 1923, J ^ 

By DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, Inc. ^ 


• • • 





FEINTED IN U. S. A. 


VAIL-BALLOU COMPANY 

BINGHAMTON AND NEW YORK 


OCT 25 1923 

CU7 59 58 7 Y*v|!» 


A 




EDITORIAL NOTE 


\ 

“The Woman of Knockaloe” is first of all a love 
story. In our opinion it is a charming and natural 
love story, beautiful in its purity, and irresistible in its 
human appeal; so simple in its incidents that it might 
be a nursery tale, so stark in its telling that it might 
be a Saga, so inevitable in the march of its scenes, from 
its almost breathless beginning to its tremendous end, 
that it might be a Greek tragedy. In this character 
alone I think it calls for serious consideration. 

But it is more than a love story. It is a Parable, 
carrying an unmistakable message, an ostensible argu¬ 
ment. Readers all over the world will so interpret it. 
They will see that it has special application to the 
times, that it is directed against War as the first author 
of the racial hatred, the material ruin, the sorrow and 
suffering, the poverty and want, which are now threaten¬ 
ing the world with destruction; that it is a plea for uni¬ 
versal peace, for speedy and universal disarmament, as 
the only alternative to universal anarchy. 

The story is laid in a little backwater of the war—a 
backwater which has never before, perhaps, been ex¬ 
plored in literature—but nevertheless it is not in the 

[v] 


EDITORIAL NOTE 


ordinary sense a war story. The late Great War does 
not enter it at all, except as an evil wind which blows 
over a mile and a half by half a mile of land in a small 
island in the Irish Sea, an Internment Camp, wherein 
twenty-five thousand men and one woman, cut off from 
life, pass four and a half years within an enclosure of 
barbed wire. 

This narrow space of blackened earth is intended to 
stand for the world in little, from 1914 to the present 
year, and the few incidents of the simple yet poignant 
tale are meant to illustrate the effect of the late war on 
the heart of humanity, to describe at very close quar¬ 
ters the consequences of what we call The Peace on 
the condition of the world and the soul of mankind, and 
to point to what the author believes to be the only hope 
of saving both from the spiritual and material suicide 
to which they are hurrying on. It is neither pro-British 
nor pro-German in sympathy, but purely pro-human. 
War itself is the only enemy the Parable is intended to 
attack. 

The battlefield the author has chosen is dangerous 
ground, but the public will not question his sincerity. 
Hall Caine is seventy years of age, and down to 1914 he 
was a life-long and even an extreme pacifist. More than 
one of his best known books was intended to show not 
only the barbarity and immorality of warfare, but also 
its cowardice and futility. Yet when the Great War 
broke out no man of letters became more speedily or 

[vi] 


EDITORIAL NOTE 


remained more consistently an advocate of the Allied 
cause. The paradox is not difficult of explanation. In 
the face of what he, in common with countless pre-war 
pacifists, believed to be a deliberate plot whereby liberty 
was to be violated, civilization was to be outraiged, re¬ 
ligion was to be degraded, the right was to be wronged, 
the weak were to be oppressed, the helpless were to he 
injured, and before the iron arm of a merciless military 
tyranny, justice and mercy and charity were to be wiped 
out of the world, he became one of the most passionate 
supporters of the war of resistance. The Great War 
stood to him, as to others, as a war to end war. 

It cannot be necessary to describe in detail his war ac¬ 
tivities even at a moment when, by the publication of 
this challenging book, his patriotism may possibly be 
questioned. They are matters of common knowledge not 
only in Great Britain and America, but also in many 
foreign countries in which his books have made his name 
known and his opinions respected. For his war services 
he was honoured by his own nation, and at least one of 
her Allies, being knighted in 1918, made an Officer of 
the Order of Leopold in 1920, and a Companion of 
Honour in 1922. 

But the war-propagandist never wholly submerged the 
pacifist. His last war article was written on Armistice 
Day, 1918, and it was intended to show that while the 
price paid for the victory of the Allied cause had been 
a terribly bitter one it had been justified, inasmuch as it 


EDITORIAL NOTE 


had killed warfare, and so banished from the earth for 
ever the greatest scourge of mankind. 

Hall Caine has lived long enough since to see the false¬ 
ness of that judgment. No one can have suffered more 
from the disappointments and disillusionment of the 
war, its political uselessness, its immeasurable cruelty, 
its limitless waste, its widespread wretchedness, and 
above all its inhuman demoralization. That the Great 
War has been in vain, that so much sacrifice, so much 
heroism, so many brave young lives have been thrown 
away, he would not for one moment say, being sure that 
in the long review of a mysterious Providence all these 
must have their place. But he is none the less sure that 
the late war has left the world worse than it found it; 
that the after-war, which we call The Peace, has been 
more productive of evil passions than the war itself 
was; that violence has never been more rampant or 
faith in the sanctity of life so low; that the poor have 
never been poorer, or the struggle to live so severe; 
and that Christian Europe has never before been such 
a chaos of separate and selfish interests or so full of 
threats of renewed and still deadlier warfare in the fu¬ 
ture—in a word that the Great War has not only failed 
to kill war but has frightfully strengthened and inflamed 
the spirit of it. 

And now he publishes his Parable, the little story 
called “The Woman of Knockaloe,” in the hope of 
showing that there can be “no peace under the soldier’s 

[viii] 


EDITORIAL NOTE 


sword,” that the salvation of the world from the moral 
and material destruction which threatens to overwhelm 
it is not to be found in governments or parliaments or 
peace conferences, but only in a purging of the heart 
of individual man of the hatreds and jealousies and 
other corruptions which the war created—in a personal 
return of all men, regardless of nation or race, or poli¬ 
tics or creed, or (as in the case of the American people) 
remoteness from the central scene of strife, to the spirit¬ 
ual and natural laws which alone can bring the human 
family back to ti^ue peace and real security—the laws 
of love and mutual sacrifice, above all the law of human 
brotherhood, which was at once the law and the first 
commandment of Christ. 

That this is a great Evangel none can doubt, and that 
it will go far in the beautiful human form in which it 
is presented, that of a deeply moving story, few will 
question. But is the world prepared for it? Is this the 
hour for such a plea? Is the Great War too recent to 
permit any of the nations who engaged in it to forgive 
their enemies? In this new book Hall Caine touches 
upon wounds that are not yet healed and sometimes the 
touch hurts. If it is an all-healing touch the pain may 
be endured. But is it? What will the British people 
think? What will the Belgians, the French and the 
Americans, who are still suffering from their bereave¬ 
ments, say to a writer who asks them, in effect, to shake 
hands with the Germans who caused them? Will not 

[ix] 


EDITORIAL NOTE 


the nations which have suffered most from the war say 
that, having beaten the Germans, it is their first duty to 
themselves and to humanity to keep them beaten? Will 
not a residue of bitterness against an author who calls 
upon the peoples of the world to make an effort that is 
impossible to the human heart at such a time obscure the 
sublimity of his message? 

On the other hand will it not be agreed that the 
Christian ideal of the forgiveness of injuries and the 
brotherhood of man is the only remaining hope of the 
redemption of the world from the lamentable condition 
into which the war, and the passions provoked by the 
war, have plunged it; that without this ideal, politics 
are a meaningless mockery, religion is an organized 
hypocrisy, and the churches are a snare, and that, how¬ 
ever hard it may be to learn the lesson, and however cruel 
the pain of it, there never was a time when it was more 
needed than now? 

Here lies the theme for many a sermon, and judging 
of “The Woman of Knockaloe” by its effect upon those 
who, besides myself, have read it, it is hardly possible 
to question its missionary value, apart from its human 
bea’uty and charm. At least it is certain that readers in 
many lands will think and continue to think of some 
of the greatest of human problems long after they have 
closed the book. 

The Publishers. 


[x] 


Ere on my bed my limbs I lay. 

It hath not been my use to pray 
With moving lips or bended knees. 

But silently, by slow degrees. 

My spirit I to love compose. 

In humble trust mine eyelids close. 

With reverential resignation. 

No wish conceived, no thought exprest. 
Only a sense of supplication; 

A sense (>er all my soul imprest 
That I am weak, yet not unblest. 

Since in me, round me, everywhere 
Eternal Strength and Wisdom are. 

But yester-night I prayed aloud. 

In anguish and in agony. 

Upstarting from the fiendish crowd 
Of shapes and thoughts that tortured me: 
A lurid light, a trampling throng. 

Sense of intolerable wrong. 

And whom I scorned, those only strong: 
Thirst of revenge, the powerless will 
Still baffled, and yet burning still! 

Desire with loathing strangely mixed 
On wild and hateful objects fixed. 
Fantastic passions! maddening brawl! 

And shame and terror over all! 


Coleridge. 


“/ cannot but regard with warm respect 
and admiration the conduct of one who, 
holding Hall Caine’s position as an ad¬ 
mired and accepted novelist, stakes him¬ 
self on so bold a protestation on behalf 
of the things which are unseen, as against 
those which are seen and are so terribly 
effective in chaining us down to the level 
of our earthly existence.” 

—W. E. Gladstone 



THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


t 


/ 


INTRODUCTORY 


I should like to say, for whatever it may be worth 
in excuse and explanation, that the following 
story, in all its essential features, came to me in 
a dream on a night of disturbed sleep early in 
December, 1922. Awakening in the grey dawn¬ 
ing with the dream still clear in my mind, I wrote 
it out hastily, briefly, in the present tense, with¬ 
out any consciousness of effort, not as a smooth 
and continuous tale, but in broken scenes, now 
vague, now vivid, just as it seemed to pass before 
me. 

Only then did I realize, first, that my dream 
contained incidents of actual occurrence which had 
quite faded from my conscious memory; next, 
that it could not claim to be otherwise true to the 
scene of it; and finally, that it was in the nature 
of a parable which expressed, through the medium 
of a simple domestic tale, the feelings which had 
long oppressed me on seeing that my cherished 

[3] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


hope of a blessed Peace that should wipe out war 
by war and build up a glorious future for man¬ 
kind, had fallen to a welter of wreck and ruin. 

There were reasons why I should not put aside 
an urgent task and write out my dream into a 
story, and other reasons why I should not attempt 
to publish anything that was so much opposed to 
the temper of the time, but I had to write it for 
the relief of my own feelings, and here it is 
written. And now I publish it with many mis¬ 
givings and only one expectation—that in the 
present troubled condition of the world, in the 
midst of the jealousy and hatred, the suffering 
and misery of the nations, which leave them 
groaning and travailing in pain, and heading 
on to an apparently inevitable catastrophe, even 
so humble and so slight a thing as this may per¬ 
haps help the march of a moving Providence and 
the healing of the Almighty hand. 

‘Tt was a dream. Ah, what is not a dream?” 


[4] 


FIRST CHAPTER 


K NOCKALOE ^ is a large farm on the west 
of the Isle of Man, a little to the south of 
the fishing town of Peel. From the farm¬ 
stead I can see the harbour and the breakwater, 
with the fishing boats moored within and the 
broad curve of the sea outside. 

There is a ridge of hills that separates the farm 
from the coast, which is rocky and precipitous. 
On the crest of the hills there is a square tower 
that is commonly called “Corrin’s Folly,” and at 
the foot of the tower there is a small graveyard 
surrounded by a stone wall. 

Too far inland to hear the roar of the sea ex¬ 
cept in winter, it is near enough to feel its salt 
breath in the summer. Not rich or leafy or 
luxuriant, but with a broad sunny bareness as of 
a place where a glacier has been and passed over, 

1 Pronounced Knock-a-loe. 

[5] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


and with a deep peace, a glacial peace, always 
lying on it—such is Knockaloe. 

The farm-house lies in the valley, close under 
the shelter of the hills. It is a substantial build¬ 
ing with large outhouses, and it is approached 
from the road by a long, straight, narrow lane 
that is bordered by short trees. 

The farmer is Robert Craine, a stalwart old 
man in a sleeve waistcoat. I seem to know him 
well. He has farmed Knockaloe all his life, fol- 
* lowing three or four generations of his family. 
But now he is a little past his best, and rarely goes 
far from home except on Sundays to one or other 
of the chapels round about, for he is a local 
preacher among the Wesleyans. 

“Fm not too good at the farming now,” he 
says, “but, man, I love to preach.” 

• His wife is dead, and she is buried in the 
churchyard of Kirk Patrick, which lies near 
his gate at the turn of the road to the railway 
station. He has a son and a daughter. The son, 
another Robert, but commonly called Robbie, is a 
fine young fellow with clear flashing eyes, about 

[6] 



THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 

six and twenty, as fresh as the heather on the moun¬ 
tains, and his father’s right-hand man. The 
daughter is named Mona, and she is a splendid 
girl of about twenty-three or four, distinctly good- 
looking, tall, full-bosomed, strong of limb, even 
muscular, with firm step and upright figure, big 
brown eyes and coal-black hair—a picture of 
grown-up health. Since her mother’s death she 
has become “the big woman” of the farm, man¬ 
aging everything and everybody, the farm-servants 
of both sexes, her brother and even her father. 

Mona has no sweetheart, but she has many 
suitors. The most persistent is heir to the cold 
and “honey” farm which makes boundary with 
Knockaloe. They call him “long John Corlett,” 
and his love-making is as crude as his figure. 

“Wouldn’t it be grand if we only had enough 
cattle between us to run milk into Douglas?” 

Mona reads him like a book and sends him 
about his business. 

Knockaloe has a few fields under cultivation 
(I see some acres of oats and wheat), but it 
is chiefly a grazing farm, supplying most of the 

[7] 



THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


milk for the people of Peel. At six in the morn¬ 
ing the maids milk the cows, and at seven Mona 
drives the milk into town in a shandry that is full 
of tall milk-cans. 

It is Sunday morning in the early part of Au¬ 
gust, nineteen hundred and fourteen. The sun 
has risen bright and clear, giving promise of 
another good day. Mona is driving out of the 
gate when she hears the crack of a rocket from 
the rocket-house connected with the lifeboat. She 
looks towards the sea. It lies as calm as a sleep¬ 
ing child, and there is not a ship in sight any¬ 
where. What does it mean? 

A cock is crowing in the bam-yard, Robbie’s 
dog is barking among the sheep on the hill, the 
bees are humming in the hedges of yellow gorse 
and the larks are singing in the blue sky. There 
is no other sound except the rattle of the shandry 
in which the fine girl, as fresh as the morning, 
stands driving in the midst of her pails, and 
whistling to herself as she drives. 

On reaching Peel she sees men in the blue cos¬ 
tume of the naval reserve bursting out of their 

[8] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


houses, shouting hurried adieux to their wives and 
children, and then flying off* with cries and laughter 
in the direction of the railway station. 

‘‘What’s going on?” asks Mona of one of the 
wives. 

“Haven’t you heard, woman? It’s the war! 
Mobilization begins to-day, and four steamers are 
leaving Douglas”—the chief port of the island— 
“to take the men to their ships.” 

“And who are we going to war with?” 

“The Germans, of course.” 

Germany has jumped on Belgium—the big 
brute on the little creature, and the men are go¬ 
ing to show her how to mend her manners. 

“They will, too,” says Mona. 

They will give the Germans a jolly good thrash¬ 
ing and then the war will soon be over. She has 
always hated the Germans—she hardly knows why. 
May they get what they deserve this time! 

Back at Knockaloe she finds Robbie visibly ex¬ 
cited. 

“You’ve heard the news, then?” 

“I have that.” 


[ 9 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


“They’ll be calling you boys off the land next.” 

“Will they? Do you think they will, girl?” 

Robbie’s black eyes were glistening. He looks 
round on the fields near the house. They are yel¬ 
low and red; the harvest will soon be over, and 
then. . . . 

It is a fortnight later. There is high commotion 
in the island. Kitchener has put out his cry: 
“Your King and Country need you.” It is posted 
up on all the walls and printed in the insular news¬ 
papers. Young men from the remotest parts are 
hurrying off to the recruiting stations. Mona and 
Robbie are at work in the harvest fields. Mona 
cannot contain her excitement. 

“Oh, why am I not a man?” 

“Would you go yourself, girl?” 

“Wouldn’t I just,” says Mona, throwing up her 
head. 

The corn is cut and stocked; nothing remains 
but to stack it. Robbie has gone into town for the 
evening. Mona and her father are indoors. The 
old man is looking grave. He remembers the 
Crimean war and its consequences. 

[ 10 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


“Robbie is getting restless,” he says. 

“What wonder?” says Mona. 

Suddenly, like a whirlwind, Robbie dashes into 
the house. 

“Eve joined up, dad! I’ve joined up, Mona!” 

Mona flings her arms about his neck and kisses 
him. The old man says little, and after a while 
he goes up to bed. 

A few days pass. It is the evening of Robbie’s 
departure. The household (all except Robbie) are 
at tea in the kitchen—the old man at the top of 
the long table, the maids and men-servants at either 
side of it, and Mona serving, according to Manx 
custom. Robbie comes leaping downstairs in his 
khaki uniform. Mona has never before seen her 
brother look so fine. 

“Good-bye all! Good-bye!” 

Mona goes down to the gate with Robbie, link¬ 
ing arms with him, walking with long strides and 
talking excitedly. He is to kill more and more 
Germans. The dirts! The scoundrels! Oh, if 
she could only go with him! 

[ 11 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


There is a joyful noise of men tramping on the 
high road. A company of khaki-clad lads on their 
way to the station come down from a mining vil¬ 
lage on the mountain, with high step, singing their 
“Tipperary.” 

Robbie falls in, and Mona watches him until 
he turns the corner by Kirk Patrick and the trees 
have hidden him. Then she goes slowly back to 
the house. Her father, with a heavy heart, has 
gone to bed. God’s way is on the sea, and His 
path is on the great deep. 

Two months have passed. Mona is managing 
the farm splendidly and everything is going well. 
About once a week there is a post-card from Rob¬ 
bie. At first the post-cards are playful, almost 
jubilant. War is a fine old game, a great adven¬ 
ture; he is to be sent to the front soon. Later 
there are letters from Robbie, and they are more 
serious. But nobody is to trouble about him. He 
is all right. They will lick these rascals before 
long and be home for Christmas. 

Every night after supper the old man sits by the 

[ 12 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 

fire and reads aloud to the household from an 
English newspaper, never before having read any¬ 
thing except his Bible and the weekly insular 
paper. 

There are hideous reports of German atrocities 
in Belgium. Mona is furious. Why doesn’t 
God hunt the whole race of wild beasts off the 
face of the earth? She would if she were God. 
The old man is silent. When the time comes to 
read the chapter from the Gospels he cannot do so, 
and creeps off to bed. Dark is the way of Provi¬ 
dence. Who shall say what is meant by it? 

The winter is deepening. It is a wild night 
outside. The old man is reading a report of 
shocking treachery in London. Germans, whom 
the English people had believed to be loyal friends 
and honest servants, have turned out to be noth¬ 
ing but spies. There has been a Zeppelin raid 
over London, and, though no lives have been lost, 
it is clear that Germans have been giving signals. 

‘Why doesn’t the Government put them all in 
prison?” says Mona. “Yes, every one of them. 

[ 13 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


The hypocrites! The traitors! The assassins!” 

The old man, who had opened the Bible, closes 
it, and goes upstairs. 

“You’re hard, woman, you’re hard,” he says. 




[14] 


SECOND CHAPTER 


C HRISTMAS has gone; the spring has come; 
the seed is in the ground; the cattle are out 
on the hill after their long winter imprison¬ 
ment in the cow-houses; but the war is still going 
on and Robbie has not yet returned home. 

It is a bright spring morning. Mona is coming 
back from Peel in her shandry when she sees three 
gentlemen walking over the farm with her father, 
one of them in officer’s uniform, the other two in 
silk hats and light overcoats. 

As she turns in at the gate she sees a fourth 
gentleman come down from the hillside and join 
them in the lane. He wears a Norfolk jacket, 
has a gun under his arm and two or three dogs at 
his heels. Mona recognizes the fourth gentleman 
as their landlord, and as she drives slowly past 
she hears her father say to him: 

“But what about the farm, sir, when the war is 

over : 


[15] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


“Don’t trouble about that,” says the landlord. 
“You are here for life, Robert—^you and your 
children.” 

Mona puts up her horse and goes into the house, 
and when the gentlemen have gone her father comes 
in to her. With a halting embarrassment he tells 
her what has happened. One of the gentlemen 
had been the Governor of the island, the strangers 
had been officials from the Home Office. 

“It seems the Government in London have come 
to your opinion, girl.” 

“What’s that?” says Mona. 

“That the civilian Germans must be interned.” 

“Interned? What does that mean?” 

“Shut up in camps to keep them out of mis¬ 
chief.” 

“Prison camps?” 

“That’s so.” 

“Serve them right, the spies and sneaks! But 
why did the gentlemen come here?” 

“The Governor brought them. He thinks 
Knockaloe is the best place in the island for an 
internment camp.” 


[16] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


Mona is aghast. 

‘‘What? Those creatures! Are we to be turned 
out of the farm for the like of them?” 

“Not that exactly,” says the old man, and he 
explains the plan that had been proposed to him 
by the gentlemen from London. He and his fam¬ 
ily are to remain in the farm-house and keep that 
part of the pasture land that lies on the hill-side 
in order to provide the fresh milk that will be 
required for the camp. 

Mona is indignant. 

“Do you mean that we are to work to keep 
alive those Germans whose brothers are killing 
our boys in France? Never! Never in this 
world.” 

Her father must refuse. Of course he must. 
The farm is theirs—for as long as the lease lasts, 
anyway. 

“Tell the Governor to find some other place for 
his internment camp.” 

The old man explains that he has no choice. 
What the Government wants in a time of war it 
must have. 


[17] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


‘Wery well,” says Mona; “let them have the 
farm and weTl go elsewhere.” 

The old man tells her that he must remain. He 
is practically conscripted. 

“They don’t want ttic, though, do they?” 

“Well, yes, they do. They are not for having 
other women about the camp, but under the cir¬ 
cumstances they must have one woman anyway.” 

“It won’t be me, then. Not likely!” 

The old man pleads with the girl. Is she going 
to leave him alone? 

“Me growing old, too, and Robbie at the war!” 

At length Mona consents. She will remain for 
her father’s sake, but she hates the thought of liv¬ 
ing in the midst of Germans and helping to pro¬ 
vide for them. 

“It will be worse than being at the war—a thou¬ 
sand times worse.” 

It is a fortnight later. Huge wagons, full of 
bricks and timber and other building materials, 
with vast rolls of barbed wire, have been arriving 
at the farm, and a multitude of bricklayers and 

[ 18 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


carpenters have been working all day long and 

half the night. Ugly stone-paved paths have been 

cut through the green fields; the grass-grown lane 

from the farm-house to the high road has been 

made into a broad bare avenue; gorse-covered 

hedges, already beginning to bloom, have been 

torn down, and long rows of hideous wooden 
/ *■ 

booths have been thrown up and then tarred and 
pitched on their faces and roofs. It has been like 
magic—^black magic, Mona calls it. 

Already a large area on the left of the avenue, 
encompassed by double lines of barbed wire, which 
look like cages for wild beasts, is ready for oc¬ 
cupation. It is called Compound Number One. 

Mona is now the only woman on the land, the 
maids being dismissed, and men and boys em¬ 
ployed to take their places. The last of the girls 
to go is a pert young thing from Peel. Her name 
is Liza Kinnish, and before the war she used to 
make eyes at Robbie. Now that other men are to 
come she wants to remain, but Mona packs her off 
with the rest. 

It is evening. Mona hears the whistle of the 

[ 19 ] 



THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


last train pulling up in the railway station, and 
a little later the cadenced tramp, tramp, tramp, 
as of an advancing army on the high road. 

. It is the first of the Germans. From the door 
of the house she looks at them as they come up 
the avenue—a long procession of men * in dark 
civilian clothes, marching in double file, with a 
thinner line of British soldiers on either side of 
them. Mona shudders. She thinks they look like 
a long black serpent. 

Next morning from the window of her bedroom 
Mona sees more of them. They are a sullen-look¬ 
ing lot, but generally well-dressed and with a 
certain air of breeding. On going towards the 
cow-house she speaks to one of the guard. He tells 
her they are the best she is likely to see. Many 
of them are well-to-do men. Some are rich, and 
have been carrying on great businesses in London 
and living in large houses and even mansions. 
Later she hears from her father that they are 
grumbling about their quarters and the food pro¬ 
vided for them. 


[20] 



THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 

“Let them,” she says. “They deserve no bet¬ 
ter.” 

In a half-hearted way the old man excuses them. 
After all they are prisoners, cut off from their wives 
and children. 

“Well, and what worse off are they than our 
men who are fighting at the front? The hypo¬ 
crites! The traitors!” 

“You’re hard, woman, you’re hard,” says the 
old man. 

It is another fortnight later. The black magic 
has been going on as before, and Compound Num¬ 
ber Two, on the right of the avenue, is ready for 
occupation. 

At the same hour in the evening Mona hears 
the tramp, tramp, tramp, as of another army com¬ 
ing up the high road. It is the second company 
of the Germans, and they are a hundredfold worse¬ 
looking than the first. A coarse, dirty, brutal lot, 
some of them in rags—sailors, chiefly, who have 
been captured at the docks in Liverpool and Glas- 

[ 21 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


gow and in certain cases taken off ships at sea. 
But they are all in high spirits, or pretend to be 
so. They come up the avenue laughing, singing 
and swearing. 

Mona is standing at the door to look at them. 
They see her, address her with coarse pleasantries 
which she does not understand, and finally make 
noises with their lips as if they were kissing her. 
She turns indoors. 

“The scum! The beasts!” she says. 

“You’re hard, woman, you’re hard,” says the 
old man. 

A month later Compound Number Three is 
ready, and once more there is the sound of march¬ 
ing on the high road. Mona, who is in the house, 
will not go to the door again. She is sour of heart 
and stomach at the thought that she has to live 
among the Germans and help to provide for them. 

She hears the new batch pass through to their 
compound, which is on the seaward side of the 
farm-house, and is compelled to notice that, un¬ 
like their predecessors, they make no noise. Next 

[ 22 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


morning her father tells her they are young men 
for the most part, young clerks, young doctors, 
young professional men of many sorts. 

‘‘Quite a decent-looking lot,” the old man says. 

Mona curls her lips. They are Germans. 
That’s enough for her. 

“You’re hard, woman, you’re hard,” the old 
man says. “What did the old Book teach thee to 
pray ?—Our Father!” 

Mona’s hatred of the Germans is deepening 
every hour, yet twice a day she has to meet with 
some of them. Morning and evening she serves 
the regulated supply of milk to the men who come 
from the compounds, attended by their guard. 
They try to engage her in conversation, but she 
rarely answers them, and she tries not to listen. 

Always the last to come is a pale-faced young 
fellow from the Third Compound. He has a hack¬ 
ing cough, and Mona thinks he must be consump¬ 
tive. An impulse of pity sometimes seizes her, but 
she fights it down. After all, what matter? He 
belongs to the breed of the brutes who plotted the 


war. 


[23] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


The newspapers continue to come, and every 
night after supper the old man reads the war news 
to his household. The Germans, who seem to have 
been always advancing, are beginning to fall back. 
The armies of the Allies are co-operating, and it 
is hoped that before long a decisive blow will be 
struck. The old man’s voice, which has usually 
had a certain tremor, grows strong and triumphant 
to-night. And when he has come to the end of his 
reading of the Gospel, which always follows the 
reading of the newspaper, he closes the big book, 
drops his head over it, shuts his eyes and, putting 
his hands together, says: 

‘‘Peace I leave with you. My peace I give 
unto you; not as the world giveth give I unto you. 
Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be 
afraid.” 

When the farm-servants have gone out of the 
kitchen, Mona, who has been standing by the fire¬ 
place leaning one hand on the high mantelpiece, 
says, in a vibrant voice: 

“Father, do you really want peace?” 

“Goodness sakes, girl, why not?” 

[ 24 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 

don’t. I want war and more war until those 
demons are driven home or wiped out of the 
world.” 

A few days later a letter comes from Robbie. 
He has been made lieutenant, and is in high 
spirits. They have had a pretty rotten time thus 
far, but things are coming round now. He has 
heard it whispered that there is to be a great of¬ 
fensive soon, and that he himself is to go, for the 
first time, up to the front trenches. He is in a 
hurry now, preparations going forward so furi¬ 
ously, but they’ll hear of him again before long. 

“So bye-bye for the present, dad, and wish me 
luck! And, by the way, tell Mona I read a 
part of her last letter to some of the officers at 
the mess last night, and when I had finished they 
all cried out, like one man, ‘My God! That 
girl’s a stunner!’ And then the major said, ‘If 
we had a thousand men with the spirit of your 
sister the war wouldn’t last a month longer.’ ” 

A week has passed since Robbie’s letter, and 
the newspapers report a wonderful victory—the 
enemy is on the run. Every evening, at the hour 

[ 25 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


when the postman is expected to arrive at the camp, 
the old man, who has said nothing, has been out 
on the paved way in front of the farm-house (the 
‘‘street,” as the Manx call it), in his sleeve waist¬ 
coat, smoking his pipe and with the setting sun 
from over the sea on his face. 

The other letter Robbie promised has not come 
yet. But this evening through the kitchen win¬ 
dow Mona sees the postman striding slowly up the 
garden path with his head down and a letter in 
his hand, and something grips at her heart. The 
postman gives the letter to her father, and goes off 
without speaking. The old man fumbles it, turn¬ 
ing the envelope over and over in his hands. It 
is a large one, and it has printing across the top. 
At length, as if making a call on his resolution, he 
opens it with a trembling hand, tearing the letter 
as he drags it out of the envelope. He looks at it, 
seems to be trying to read it and finding himself 
unable to do so. Mona goes out to him, and he 
gives her the tom sheet of typewriting. 

“Read it, girl,” he says helplessly, and then he 
lays hold of the trammon tree that grojvs by the 

[ 26 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


porch. Mona begins, “The Secretary of State for 
War regrets . . 

She stops. There is no need to go farther. 
Robbie has fallen in action. 

The truth dawns on the old man in a moment. 
An unseen flash as of lightning seems to strike 
him, and he reels as if about to fall. M'ona calls 
to some of the farm hands, and they help her 
father indoors and up to bed, and then run for 
the nearest dox^tor—the English doctor of the 
First Compound. 

The old man has had a stroke. It is a slight 
one, but he must stay in bed for a long time and 
he kept absolutely quiet. No more letters or 
newspapers—nothing that will startle or distress 
him. It is his only chance. 

Mona does not cry, but her eyes flash and her 
nostrils quiver. Her hatred of the Germans is 
now fiercer than ever. They have killed her 
brother and stricken her father. May God pun¬ 
ish them—every one of them! Not their Kings 
and Kaisers only, but every man, woman and child! 
If He does not, there is no God at all—there can¬ 
not be. 


[27] 




THIRD CHAPTER 


T hree months pass. The Internment Camp 
has been growing larger and larger. There 
are five compounds in it now, and twenty- 
five thousand civilian prisoners, besides the British 
Commandant and his officers and guard—two 
thousand more. It is a big ugly blotch of booths 
and tents and bare ground, surrounded by barbed 
wire and covering with black ashes like a black 
hand the green pastures where the sweet-smell¬ 
ing farm had been. In the middle of the camp, 
cut off from the compounds, is the farm-house, 
and its outhouses, with their many cows, and its 
farm-servants who sleep in the rooms over the 
dairy. 

Mona is the only woman among twenty-seven 
thousand men. The Commandant, who i^ kind, 
calls her “The Woman of Knockaloe.” The first 
shock of her brother’s loss and her father’s seizure 
is over and she is going on with her work as be- 

[ 28 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 

fore. After all the ‘‘creatures” of the cow-house 
have to be attended to, and if she could not leave 
Knockaloe before the Germans came she cannot 
leave it now when her father lies half-paralysed 
upstairs. 

As often as she can do so during the day she 
runs up to him, and at night, after she has given 
the men their supper, she reads to him. It is only 
the Bible now, and by the old man’s choice no 
longer the Gospels, but the Old Testament—Job 
with its lamentations, and afterwards the Psalms, 
but not the joyful ones, only those in which David 
calls on the Lord to revenge him upon his ene¬ 
mies. Her father is a changed man. His heart 
has grown bitter. He takes a fierce joy in David’s 
denunciations and mutters them to himself when he 
is alone. 

The girl was right. Those spawn of the Pit— 
what fate is too bad for them? 

Christmas comes, the second Christmas, then 
spring, the second spring. Mona watches the life 
of the camp with loathing. Rising in the grey of 
the morning, she sees the prisoners ranging round 

[ 29 ] 



THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


their compounds like beasts in a cage, and on 
going to bed in the dark she sees the white light 
of the arc-lamps which have been set up at the 
far corners of the camp to prevent their escape 
during the night. She hears of frequent rioting, 
rigorously put down, and then of an attempt at 
insurrection in the messroom of the First Com¬ 
pound and of four prisoners being shot down by 
the guard. Serve them right! She has no pity. 

She overhears the guards talking of indescrib- 

0 

able vices among the men of the Third Compound 
and then of terrible punishments. Her work some¬ 
times requires that she should pass this compound, 
and as often as she does so she becomes conscious 
that behind the barbed wires the men are looking 
at her with evil eyes and laughing like monkeys. 
Her flesh creeps—she feels as if they were strip¬ 
ping her naked. The beasts! The monsters! 

One sunny morning in the early summer Mona 
is awakened by the loud boom of a gun from the 
sea. Looking out she sees a warship coming to 
anchor in the bay. Later she sees great activity 
in the officers’ quarters and hears that the Home 

[ 30 ] 



THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 

Secretary has come from London to make an in¬ 
spection of the camp and that the Commandant 
has sent for the Governor. Still later she sees 
the three going the rounds of the compounds. To¬ 
wards noon they pass the farm on their way to the 
Commandant’s dining-room, and, the kitchen win¬ 
dow being open, Mona hears what the stranger, 
who looks angry, is saying: 

‘‘What can you expect? Shut men up like dogs 
and what wonder if they develop the vices of dogs! 
The only remedy is work, work, work.” 

A few days after that the joiners and brick¬ 
layers are building workshops all over the camp 
and within a month there is the sound of hammer¬ 
ing and sawing and planing from inside these 
places, as if the prisoners were working. Mona 
laughs. * They will never turn these creatures into 
human beings—never! 

Autumn comes and the fields outside the camp 
are waving yellow and red to the harvest, but the 
Manx boys, nearly all that are worth anything, are 
away at the war, and the farmers are saying the 

[ 31 ] 



THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


corn will lie down uncut and rot on the ground if 
they cannot get help to gather it. 

One night she hears that the better-behaved of 
the prisoners are to be sent out to the neighbour¬ 
ing farms to work at the harvesting, and next morn¬ 
ing she sees a batch of them going off with their 
guard, down the avenue and through the gates. 

“There’ll be trouble coming of this,” she thinks. 
“Such men are not to be trusted.” 

Inside a month the camp is ringing with a scan¬ 
dal. The letters arriving at the camp for the 
prisoners have always been examined by censors. 
Most of the letters have come from friends in their 
own country, but now it is found that some are 
from Manx girls, who, having met with German 
prisoners while working on the land, have struck 
up friendships. One of these girls has written to 
tell her German lover that she is in “trouble” and 
that the wife of her master is turning her out. Her 
name is Liza Kinnish. 

Mona’s anger is unbounded. The slut! She 
has a brother at the war too! Mona has no pity 
for such creatures. While their boys out there 

[ 32 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOGKALOE 


at the front are fighting and dying for them they 
are carrying on at home with these German rep¬ 
tiles! Serve them right, whatever the disgrace 
that falls on them! 

“Fd have such women whipped—yes, whipped 
in the public market-place.” 

From that time forward Mona hates the prison¬ 
ers as she had never hated them before. She 
cannot bear to look into their German faces or 
to hear the sound of their German voices. All 
the same she has to live among them for her 
father’s sake and even to serve them twice a day 
with the milk from the dairy. 

Late in the year, at seven in the morning, she 
is measuring the milk into the cans, which are 
marked with the numbers of the various com¬ 
pounds. The prisoners come to carry them away, 
saluting her with the mist about their mouths as 
they do so, but she makes no answer. When she 
thinks they have all gone she finds the can of the 
Third Compound still standing by the dairy door 
where she had left it. 


[33] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


The pale-faced boy who coughed always came 
for that, and was generally the last to arrive. 
After a while, when she has her back to the door, 
she hears a voice behind her. 

“Is this for me, miss?” 

She starts. Something in his voice arrests her. 
It is not harsh and guttural, like that of the other 
prisoners, but soft, deep and human. For one 
dizzy moment she almost thinks it is Robbie’s. 

She turns. A young man, whom she has never 
seen before, is on the threshold. He is about 
thirty years of age, tall, slim, erect, fair-haired, 
with hazel eyes and a clean-cut face that has an 
open expression. Can this be a German? 

After a moment of silence Mona says: 

“Who are you?” 

He tells her. The young fellow who had fetched 
the milk before had broken a blood-vessel on 
awakening early that morning and been carried 
up to the hospital. 

“What’s your name?” 

“Oskar.” 


“Oskar what?” 


[ 34 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 

“Oskar Heine.” 

“And you are in Compound Three?” 

“Yes.” 

Mona gazes at him in silence for a moment, and 
then recovering herself, she says: 

“Yes, that’s yours.” 

The young man touches his cap and says: 

“Thank you.” 

Mona tries to answer him but she cannot. He 
goes off, carrying his can, and with his guard be¬ 
hind him. Mona finds herself looking after him, 
first through the door and then through the dairy 
window. 

All that day she goes about her work with a 
serious face and is cross with the farm hands when 
they do anything amiss. And at night, when sup¬ 
per is over, and her father calls down to her to 
come up and read his Bible, she calls back. 

“Not to-night, dad—I’ve got a headache.” 

Then she sits before the fire alone and does not 
go to bed until morning. 


[ 35 ] 


FOURTH CHAPTER 


A nother month has passed. Mona has 
been fighting a hard battle with herself. 
Some evil spirit seems to have found its 
way into her heart and she has had to struggle 
against it all day and every day. 

“It can’t be true! It’s impossible! I should 
hate myself,” she thinks. 

To fortify herself against her secret enemy she 
spends as much time as she can spare with her 
father. The old man is now bitterer than ever 
against the Germans. They have killed his son, 
and he can never forgive them. 

“Let God arise and let his enemies be scat¬ 
tered. . . . Let not the ungodly have their desire, 
0 Lord; let hot burning coals fall upon them; let 
them be cast into the fire and into the pit, that they 
may never rise again.” 

Mona hears the old man’s voice through the thin 
partition wall that separates her room from his, 

[36] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


and she makes an effort to join in his imprecations. 
But the terrible thing is that she catches herself 
thinking they are wicked psalms, and that David, 
when he said such things, was not “a man after 
God’s own heart” but a devil. 

This frightens her and she tries to make amends 
to her conscience by being as harsh as possible to 
the prisoners. When Oskar comes to the dairy 
with the rest she never allows herself to look at 
him, and when he speaks, which is seldom, she 
snaps at him or else tries not to hear what he is 
saying. But one morning she is compelled to lis¬ 
ten. 

“Ludwig’s gone.” 

“Ludwig?” 

“The man who used to come for the milk.” 

“The boy with the cough?” 

“Yes. Died in the night and is to be buried to¬ 
morrow. Just twenty-two and such a quiet young 
fellow. He was the only son of his mother too, 
and she is a widow. I’ve got to write and tell her. 
She’ll be broken-hearted.” 

Mona feels a tightening at her throat, and then 

[37] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


tears in her eyes, but she forces herself to say: 
‘‘Well, she’s not the only mother who has lost a son. 
People who make wars must expect to suffer for 
them.” 

Oskar looks at her for a moment and then goes 
off without speaking again. At the next moment 
she catches herself looking after him through the 
window just as he turns his head and looks back. 

“Oh God, forgive me! Forgive me!” she 
thinks and feels as if she would like to beat her¬ 
self. 

A week later when Oskar comes as usual he is 
carrying a small wooden box, which he sets down 
inside the dairy door. It is from Ludwig’s mother, 
and contains one of the little glass domes of arti¬ 
ficial flowers which the Germans lay on the graves 
of their dead. 

“She asks me to lay them on Ludwig’s, but how 
can I, not being allowed to go out of the gates?” 

The lid of the box has been loosened, and lift¬ 
ing it, he shows the glass dome with an inscription 
attached. Mona allows herself to stoop and look 
at it. It is in German. 

[ 38 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


‘‘What does it say?” she asks. 

“ ‘With Mother’s everlasting love.’ ” 

Mona feels as if a knife has gone to her heart, 
but she rises hastily and says sharply: “You may 
take it away. I’ll have nothing to do with it,” and 
Oskar goes off, but he leaves the box behind him. 

All day long she tries not to look at it, but it is 
constantly meeting her eye, and in the evening, 
when her work is done and everything is quiet, she 
picks up the box, puts it under her cloak and turns 
towards the gates of the encampment. 

“Better have it out of my sight,” she thinks as 
she goes into the churchyard of Kirk Patrick. 

She has no diflBculty in finding the place. Other 
Germans have died and been buried since the camp 
began. Here they lie in a little square by them¬ 
selves at the back of the church, with recumbent 
white marble stones above them inscribed with 
their foreign names. On the last of the graves, 
not yet covered, she lays the flowers and then 
throws the box away. 

“After all, it’s only human. Nobody can blame 
me for that.” 


[ 39 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


But do what she will she cannot help thinking 
of the German boy and of his mother weeping for 
him in his German home. 

She has heard the tramp of a horse’s hoofs on 
the road behind her, and as she returns through 
the lych-gate the rider draws up and speaks to her. 
It is the Commandant, who has been taking his 
evening ride before dinner. He asks what she 
has been doing and she tells him quite truthfully. 
He looks serious and says: ‘Tt’s natural that you 
should feel pity for some of these men, but take an 
old man’s advice, my child, and don’t let it go any 
further.” 

Mona tries to follow the Commandant’s counsel, 
but doing so tears her heart until it bleeds. Even 
the hours with her father fail to fortify her. The 
old man is well enough now to sit up in a chair in 
his bedroom and certain of his neighbouring 
farmers are permitted to see him. One of them, 
a babbling fellow, tells him of the sinking of a 
great passenger liner by an enemy submarine and 
the loss of more than a thousand lives. 

[40] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 

The old man breaks into a towering passion. 
“Those sons of darkness, may the Lord destroy 
them for ever! May the captain of that submarine 
never know another night’s sleep as long as he 
lives! May the cries of the drowning torment his 
soul until it comes up for judgment, and may it 
then be damned for ever!” 

“Be quiet, father,” says Mona. “You know 
what the doctor said. Besides, is it Christian-like 
to follow the sins of a man to the next world and 
wish his soul in hell?” 

But when she is alone in her own room she knows 
that her Christian charity is all a delusion. 

“Oh God help me! God help me! Send me 
something to help me,” she cries. 

One morning in summer the Commandant calls 
on her father and she leads him upstairs. He 
takes a little leather-covered case out of his pocket 
and, opening it by its spring, shows a military 
medal. 

“What is it?” asks the old man. 

“The Victoria Cross, old friend, won by your 

[41] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


son for conspicuous bravery in battle and sent to 
you by the King.” 

The old man wipes his eyes and says: “But 
who is to wear it now that Robbie is gone?” 

“May I make a suggestion?” says the Comman¬ 
dant. “Let your daughter wear it. Why not?” 

“Yes, yes, why not?” says Mona, and she seizes 
it convulsively and pins it on her breast. 

Next morning, feeling braver, with the medal 
on her breast, she looks Oskar Heine full in the 
face when he comes to the dairy door as usual. 
He sees it and asks what it is and where it came 
from, and with a proud lift of the head she tells 
him, almost defiantly, about Robbie and what he 
did at the war. 

“What a splendid fellow your brother must have 
been,” says Oskar. 

Mona gasps. All her pride and defiance seem 
to be stricken out of her in a moment. 

The English newspapers continue to come, and 
one evening, in the midst of reports of indescrib¬ 
able German barbarities, Mona finds a letter from 

[42] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


an English soldier to his family telling of a good 
act by an enemy. He had been wounded in an en¬ 
gagement in Belgium and, left all day for dead on 
the battlefield, he had crawled at night on his 
stomach over half a mile of churned-up land to a 
lonely farmhouse, being drawn to it by a dim light 
in a window. The farmer had turned out to be an 
old German, but he had been “a white man” for 
all that, and though some of the officers of the vic¬ 
torious German army were even then drinking and 
singing and making merry in his front parlour, he 
had smuggled the wounded British lad into his 
cellar, and helped him to escape in the morning. 

Some dizzy impulse, vaguely associated with 
misty thoughts of Oskar, causes Mona to carry the 
newspaper upstairs and to read the boy’s letter to 
her father. 

‘‘So there’s good and bad in all races, you see. 
That old German farmer must be a good creature,” 
she says. Whereupon the old man, who has pulled 
himself up in bed to listen, says, with tight-set lips 
and an angry frown: 


[43] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 

“Maybe he is, but who knows if he isn’t the 
father of the brute who fired the explosive bullet 
into my son’s heart?” 

Mona drops the newspaper and flies from the 
room, and the old man cries after her in a whim¬ 
pering voice: 

“What’s coming over thee, girl? I can’t tell in 
the world what’s coming over thee.” 


[44] 


FIFTH CHAPTER 


O NE morning Mona hears of something that 
seems to strengthen her against her secret 
enemy. A prisoner in Compound Four, 
which lies nearest to the hill, has been captured 
during the night in an attempt to escape by means 
of a tunnel from his dormitory to the open field 
under “Corrin’s Folly.” The case has been 
brought before the Commandant, and he has re¬ 
ferred it to the civil court in Peel. With nothing 
to complain of now, what ingrates these Germans 
are! 

Mona hurries to the court-house. It is full to 
overflowing with police, guards and townspeople. 
The Governor of the island has been sent for, and 
he is sitting on the bench with the High Bailiff. 
The prisoner is in the dock with a soldier on either 
side of him. His appearance is a shock to Mona. 
Instead of the hardened sinner she had expected 
to look upon, she sees a thin, pale, timid- 

[45] 


\ 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


looking man with fever in his frightened eyes. 

The facts are proved against him by the captain 
of the guard, and by one of his fellow-prisoners. 
For two months at least he had been tunnelling the 
ground from beneath his bed to the field outside 
the barbed-wire fences, working at night, while the 
other prisoners were asleep, and concealing the 
soil he dug out of the ground in the empty space 
under the stage of the camp theatre, which was also 
the camp chapel. At the last moment, just as he 
was about to emerge from the earth in the darkness 
of night, he had been caught by one of the guard, 
who had acted on the information of his nearest 
bed-fellow. 

Already the story of this treachery has swal¬ 
lowed up Mona’s feeling against the prisoner, but 
when, in reply to the Governor, who addresses him 
sharply, he tells his own story, in halting words 
and with a tremor in his voice, she finds the tears 
dropping on the military medal she is wearing on 
her bosom. 

He is a hairdresser, married to an English- 

[46] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


woman and has two children, both little. After his 
marriage he had always meant to take out his 
nationalization papers, but when he had saved 
enough money to do so his wife was not well, for 
she was expecting her first baby, so he spent it in 
taking her to the seaside for a holiday. After¬ 
wards they set up a shop in a suburb of London 
and that took everything. 

“Come to the point. Don’t waste the time of 
the court,” says the Governor. 

The prisoner struggles on with his story. At 
first when he was brought to the camp his wife 
wrote every week, telling him how she was and 
how the children were. His eldest little girl had 
been going to a private school, and when her 
schoolmates asked her where was her father she 
used to say: “Daddy is at the war,” for that was 
what his wife had told the child. But the truth 
got out at last, and then the parents of the other 
children demanded that his little girl should be 
dismissed, and she was, and now she was on the 


streets. 


[47] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


‘‘Quick! What has all that got to do with your 
attempt to escape?” says the Governor, and Mona 
feels as if she wants to strike him. 

“But that’s not everything, your Excellency,” 
says the prisoner. 

“Go on,” says the High Bailiff. 

“After a time my wife stopped writing, and 
then I had a letter from a neighbour.” 

“What did it say?” asks the High Bailiff, and 
with a fierce flash of his wild eyes the prisoner tells 
him. 

Another German, who for some reason had been 
exempted from internment, had been put in by 
the authorities to help his wife to carry on the 
business, which was going to wreck and ruin. He 
was a scoundrel, and he had got hold of his wife, 
who had given in to him for the sake of the chil¬ 
dren. 

“It drove me mad to think of it, sir. That’s 
why I worked at night, making that tunnel under 
the ground, while the other men were sleeping. I 
wanted to get back and kill him.” 

[48] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


“Good thing we caught you in time, then,” says 
the Governor. 

The sentence is bread and water and seven 
days’ solitary confinement. 

Mona, who wants to cry out in court, hurries 
home, and she is there when the guard brings the 
prisoner back. He looks like a picture of despair 
—bewildered, distraught and hopeless. 

Mona finds it harder than ever after this to lis¬ 
ten to her father’s imprecations when somebody 
tells him of German victories. 

‘‘Let God arise and let his enemies be scat¬ 
tered. . . . Root them out, 0 Lord, that they be 
no more a people.” 

Sometimes she makes a sort of remonstrance, 
and then the old man looks up at her and says 
again: 

“What’s come over thee, woman? I don’t know 
in the world what’s coming over thee.” 

Every morning on getting up she looks away 
over the barbed-wire fence to the open fields be- 

[49] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


yond where the young men and the girls are work¬ 
ing, as Robbie and she used to do in the early dawn 
at harvest. And every night on going to bed she 
stares down at the bare, black, cinder-covered en¬ 
campment lit up from end to end by its fierce white 
arc-lights. More than ever now she feels like that 
hairdresser, and wants to escape from the camp. 
Yet the strange thing is that she knows quite well 
that even if she could do so she would not. 

Oskar Heine has been made a camp captain for 
good behaviour, and is permitted to move about 
as he likes, yet they rarely meet and hardly ever 
speak. But one day he comes alone to the door of 
the dairy, and holding out something that is in the 
palm of his hand he says: 

“Do you know this?” 

It is Robbie’s silver lever watch. 

“Where did you get it?” 

“An old schoolfellow of mine sent it from home 
—from Mannheim.” 

“How did he come by it?” 

He tells her. At the beginning of the last Brit¬ 
ish advance his schoolfellow had been shot im- 

[50] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


mediately in front of the first line of the British 
trenches. He had lain there for some time with 
the bullets whistling over his head, crying out for 
his mother (as men do on the battlefield if they 
think they are dying), when he heard an English 
soldier say: 

‘‘Look here, lads, I can’t listen to this chap any 
longer; I’m going to fetch him in.” Then the sol¬ 
dier had climbed over the top and dragged him 
down to the British trench; but in doing so he had 
himself been potted. The British lads had put 
them both into a dug-out, lying side by side, and 
when their advance began they had gone on and 
left them. How long they lay together Oskar’s 
schoolfellow did not know. When he came to 
himself he had found he was getting better, but his 
companion was fatally wounded. At length the 
brave fellow (he was a lieutenant) had tugged at 
his pocket, and dragged out his watch and said: 
“Look here, Fritz old chap, if you live to go home 
send this to my sister; she lives at Knockaloe.” 

Mona tosses in bed all that night, gazing into 
the darkness with terror, after she has drawn her 

[51] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 

curtains close to shut out the light of the arc-lamps. 
Remembering what her father had said when she 
read the soldier boy’s letter, she had not shown the 
watch to her father, but hidden it away in a drawer. 
It had come to her like a reproach from the dead, 
and she was afraid to look at it. 

All at once she asks herself why? If those two 
brave boys lying out there in that deserted dug- 
out, the one thinking of his sister at Knockaloe and 
the other of his mother in her German home, could 
be friends at the last, was it the devil that had 
made them so? 

‘‘Oh God, my God, why do men make wars?” 


[52] 


SIXTH CHAPTER 


M ona knows that this is the beginning of the 
end. She finds herself thinking of Oskar 
constantly, and especially when she is 
dropping off to sleep at night and awakening in 
the morning. With a hot and quivering heart she 
asks herself what is to come of it all. She does 
not know. She dare not think. A feeling of 
shame and dread seems to clutch her by the throat. 

One day the neighbouring farmer who comes to 
visit her father blurts out another of his shocking 
stories. It is about a mid-day raid over London. 

Towards noon on a beautiful summer day, in an 
infant school in East London, a hundred little 
children, ranging in age from three years to six, 
had been singing their hymn before tlie time came 
to scamper home in childish glee to dinner, when 
out of the sunshine of the sky two bombs had fallen 
from a German air-machine and killed ten of them 
and wounded fifty. The scene had been a fright- 

[53j 



THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 

ful shambles. Some of the children had been de¬ 
stroyed beyond all recognition, their sweet limbs 
being splashed like a bloody avalanche against the 
broken walls. And when, a moment later, their 
mothers had come breathless, bare-headed and with 
wild eyes to the schoolhouse door, they saw the 
mangled bodies of their little ones brought out in a 
stream of blood. 

Mona enters her father’s bedroom just as the 
babbler is finishing his story. The old man, who 
is quivering with rage, has struggled to his feet 
and is stamping his stick on the floor and swearing 
—nobody ever having heard an oath from his lips 
before. 

“They’ll pay for it, though—these damned mad¬ 
men and their masters—they’ll pay for it to the 
uttermost farthing! Cursed be of God, these sons 
of hell!” 

The Government in London must make reprisals. 
They must destroy a thousand German children for 
every British child that had been destroyed! 

Mona tries first to appease and then to reprove 
him. What good will it do the poor dead chil- 

[54] 



THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


dren in London that other children in Germany, 
now living in the fulness of their childish joy, 
should be massacred? 

“The children are innocent. . . 

“Innocent? They’ll not be long innocent. 
They’ll grow up and do the same themselves. Oh 
my God, do Thou to them as with the Midianites 
who perished at Endor, and became as the dung of 
the earth!” 

“Hush! Hush! Father! Father!” 

“Why not? What’s coming over thee, woman? 
What’s been happening downstairs to change 
thee?” 

At that word Mona feels as if a sword 
has pierced her heart, and she hurries out of the 
room. 

After a while the mother-instinct in her comes 
uppermost. Her father is right. To make war 
on children is the crime of crimes. The people 
who do such things must belong to the race of the 
devil. 

That evening she is crossing to the “haggard” 
when she meets Oskar Heine coming out of his 

[55] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


compound. She does not look his way, but he 
stops her and speaks. 

‘‘You’ve heard what’s in the papers?” 

“Indeed I have.” 

“I’m ashamed. I’m sorry.” 

“Never mind about sorry. Wait until the same 
is done to your own people, and then we’ll see, 
we’ll see.” 

He is about to tell her something, but she will 
not listen, and goes off with uplifted head. 

A week passes. Mona has seen nothing more of 
Oskar Heine. Being free to come and go as he 
likes, he must be keeping out of her way. She is 
feeling less bitter about that shocking thing in Lon¬ 
don. After all, it was war. It is true that all the 
victories of war are as nothing against the golden 
head of one darling child, but then nobody sees 
that now. Nobody in the world has ever seen it— 
nobody but He. . . . 

^^Suffer the little children to come unto me . . 

But only think! That was said two thousand 
years ago, and yet . . . and yet . . . 

[56] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 

Christmas is near, the third Christmas. Mona 
reads in the newspaper that it has been agre 3 d by 
the Marshal and generals commanding on both 
sides of the Western Front that there shall be a 
four hours’ truce of the battlefields on Christmas 
Eve. How splendid! A truce of God in memory 
of what happened two thousand years ago! Why 
couldn’t they have it in the camp also? She sug¬ 
gests the idea to Oskar. 

‘‘Glorious! Why can’t we?” he says. 

He will find a way to put the matter up to the 
Commandant, and then he will speak to the prison¬ 
ers. 

Since the prisoners have been set to work they 
have been living a more human life in their amuse¬ 
ments also. Every compound has its band. The 
guards have their band, too. Mona hears from 
Oskar that the Commandant consents. 

“It’s Christmas! God bless me, yes, why not?” 
he says. 

The prisoners are delighted, and the guards 
agree to pray with them. 

[57] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 

‘‘Oh, they’re not such bad chaps after all,” the 
captain says. 

At the beginning of Christmas week there is the 
muffled sound at night of the bands in various parts 
of the camp practising inside their booths. Oskar 
comes to the door of the farm-house to say that 
they intend to play in unison, and want the 
“Woman of Knockaloe” to choose the carols and 
hymns for them. Mona chooses what she knows. 
“Noel,” “The Feast of Stephen,” and “Lead, 
Kindly Light.” 

“Splendid!” says Oskar. He is to be the con¬ 
ductor in Compound Three. 

Snow falls, then comes frost, and on Christmas 
Eve the ground of the black camp is white and 
hard, and a moon is shining—a typical Christmas. 

Mona has had a bustling day, but at nine she is 
finished and goes upstairs to sit with her father. 
The old man, who is in bed, has heard something 
of her activities, and is not too well pleased with 
them. 

“What’s coming over thee, girl?” he keeps on 

[58] 



THE WOMAN OF KNOCJCALOE 


repeating. ‘‘What’s coming over thee anyway?” 

“Goodness sakes, why ask me that, dad? It’s 
Christmas, isn’t it?” 

Having three hours to wait, she sits by the fire 
and reads to him—from the Gospels this time: 

*^And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, 
and the glory of the Lord shone round about them; 
and they were sore afraid, 

^^And the angel said unto them, Fear not; for, 
behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, 
which shall be to all people, 

^‘For unto you is born this day, in the city of 
David, a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord, , , , 

^‘And suddenly there was with the angel a mul¬ 
titude of the heavenly host, praising God and say¬ 
ing, 

^‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, 
goodwill toward men^ 

Mona stops. The old man is breathing heavily. 
He has fallen asleep. 

At eleven o’clock Mona is in her own room. 
What a magnificent night! The moon is shining 
full through ie window, making its pattern on the 

[ 59 ] 



THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


carpet. Outside it is so bright that the entire camp 
is lit up by it, and there had been no need to 
switch on the big arc-lamps. 

The camp lies white in the sparkling snow. For 
the first time for more than three years it is not dis¬ 
tinguishable from the country round about. The 
white mantle of winter has made camp and country 
one. 

It is quiet out there in the night. Not a breath 
of wind is stirring. A dog is barking in the Fifth 
Compound, which is half a mile away. There is 
no other sound except a kind of smothered hum 
from the inside of the booths, where twenty-five 
thousand men are waiting for the first hour of 
Christmas Day—only this and the rhythmical throb 
of the tide on the distant shore. The old man in 
the next room is still breathing heavily. 

Mona, too, is waiting. She is sitting up on her 
bed, half-covered by the counterpane. At one mo¬ 
ment she remembers Robbie’s watch and thinks of 
taking it out of the drawer and winding it up and 
putting it on, but something says ‘‘Not yet.” Al- 

[ 60 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


though Peel church is nearly a mile away, she 
tells herself that on this silent night she will hear 
the striking of the clock. 

She thinks of the battlefront in France. The 
truce of God is there too. No booming of cannon, 
no shrieking of shells, only the low murmur of a 
sea of men in the underground trenches and the 
bright moon over the white waste about them. 
Thank God! Thank God! 

At a quarter to twelve she is up again and at 
the window. A dim, mysterious, divine majesty 
seems to have come down on all the troubled world. 
The moon is shining full on her face. She hears 
marching on the crinkling snow—the band of the 
guard are crossing the avenue to take up the place 
assigned to them on the officers’ tennis-court. Be¬ 
hind them there is the shuffling of irregular feet— 
her farm-hands are following. 

Then, through the thin air comes the silvery 
sound of the clock of Peel church striking mid¬ 
night, and then, clear and distinct, from the guards’ 
band the first bar of “The Feast of Stephen.” 

[ 61 ] 



THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


‘‘When the snow lay on the ground . . 

After that another bar of it from the Third Com¬ 
pound (Oskar must be conducting): 

“Deep and crisp and even . . 

Then comes another bar from the First Com¬ 
pound, and then another and another from the dis¬ 
tant Compounds Four and Five. 

After that there is a second carol: 

“Noel, Noel, born is the King of Israel, . . 

Then another carol and another, all played like 
the first, and finally, verse by verse, from near and 
far, the hymn she had selected: 

“Lead, kindly light, amid the encircling gloom’' 

Mona is crying. Now she understands herself 
—why she suggested this to Oskar and why Oskar 
has carried it out. If only peace would come the 
barrier that divides them would be broken down! 
God send it! God send it! 

Her breath on the window-pane has frosted the 
cold glass, but she is sure she sees somebody com¬ 
ing towards the house. It is a man, and he is 
stumbling along, half doubled up as if drunk or 
wounded. He is making for the front door. 

[ 62 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOGKALOE 


Trembling with half-conscious apprehension of the 
truth, Mona runs downstairs to open it. 

The man is Oskar Heine. By the light of the 
lamp she had left burning on the table she sees 
him. He is clutching with one hand a bough of 
the trammon tree that grows by the porch, and in 
the other he holds a sheet of blue paper. His cap 
is pushed back from his forehead, which is wet 
with perspiration, his eyes are wild, and his face 
is ashen. 

‘‘May I come in?” 

“Indeed yes.” 

He comes into the house, never having done so 
before, and drops heavily into the old man’s seat 
by the fire, which is dying out. 

“What is it?” she asks. 

“Look,” he says, and hands her the paper. “It 
has just come. The post was late to-night.” His 
voice seems to be dying out also. 

Mona takes the paper. It is in English, and, 
standing by the lamp, she begins to read it aloud: 
merican Consulate — Mannheim’^ 

“That’s my home—Mannheim.” 

[ 63 ] 



THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


^7 regret to inform you . . 

“Don’t! Don’t!” 

Mona reads the rest of the letter to herself. It 
is from the American Consul, and tells Oskar that 
in a British air raid in the middle of the night the 
house in which his mother had lived with his sister 
had been struck by a bomb, and the wing in which 
his sister slept had been utterly destroyed. 

Mona makes a cry and involuntarily reads aloud 
again: 

“r/ie child is missing and it is believed . . 

“Don’t! Don’t!” 

There is silence between them for a moment, 
only broken by Oskar’s low sobs and Mona’s quick 
breathing. 

“Your sister?” 

“Yes, I wanted to tell you about her that night 

of . . .” 

“I know,” says Mona. With a stab of remorse 
the memory of what she had said has come back to 
her. 

“Only ten. Such a sweet little thing—the 
sweetest darling in the world. Used to write 

[ 64 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


every week and send me her sketches. My father 
died when she was a baby, and since then she has 
looked on me as father and brother too. And now 
. . . Oh, it is too stupid! It is too stupid!” 

Mona cannot speak, and he goes on saying: 

“It is too stupid. It is too stupid!” 

He drops his head into his hands, and Mona 
sees the tears oozing out between his fingers. 

“Mignon! My little Mignon!” 

Still Mona does not utter a word, and at last he 
gets up and says: 

“I had to tell you. There was no one else.” 

His face is broken up and he is turning to go. 
Mona can bear no more. By a swift, irresistible, 
unconquerable, almighty impulse she flings her 
arms about his neck. 

Meantime, the old man upstairs had been aw ik- 
ened by the bands. He had raised himself in bed 
to listen. The carols out there in the night touched 
him at first, but after a while they made him feel 
still more bitter. He was thinking about Robbie. 
What was the good of singing about peace in the 

[ 65 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


midst of war? Peace? There would be no peace 
until the righteous God, with His mighty hand and 
outstretched arm, had hewn His enemies to pieces! 

He heard a heavy thud at the door downstairs, 
and then a man’s voice, with Mona’s, in the kitchen. 
His first thought was of ‘‘The Waits,” for which 
Manx girls stayed up on Christmas Eve, and then 
a blacker thought came to him. 

He struggled out of bed, pulled on his dressing- 
gown, fumbled for his walking-stick, and made for 
the stairs. It was dark on the landing, but there 
was light below coming from the kitchen, and, 
making a great effort, he staggered down. 

How long Mona and Oskar were in each other’s 
arms they did not know. It might have been only 
for a moment. But all at once they became aware 
of a shuffling step behind them. Mona turns to 
look. Her father is on the threshold. 

The old man’s face is ghastly. His eyes blaze, 
his mouth is open and his lips quiver, as if he is 
struggling for breath and voice. At length both 
come, and he falls on Mona with fearful cries, 

[ 66 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 

‘‘Harlot! Strumpet! So this is what has been 
changing thee! Thy brother dead in France, and 
thou in the arms of this German! May God pun¬ 
ish thee! May thy brother’s spirit follow thee 
day and night and destroy thee! Curse thee! 
Curse thee! May the curse of God . . 

The old man’s voice chokes in his throat. His 
face changes colour, and he totters and falls. 

Before Mona is aware of it some of the farm¬ 
hands are in the house picking the old man up. 
She had left the outer door open, and they had 
heard her father’s cries. 

They carry him back to bed, limp and uncon¬ 
scious. Mona stands for some moments as if 
smitten by a blow on the brain. A horror of great 
darkness has fallen on her. When she recovers 
self-possession she looks round for Oskar. He 
has gone. 


[ 67 ] 


SEVENTH CHAPTER 


T he old farmer died, without speaking, a few 
days after his second seizure. Mona 
watched with him constantly. Sometimes 
she prayed, with all the fervour of her soul, that 
he might recover consciousness. But the strange 
thing was that sometimes she found herself hop¬ 
ing that he might never do so. 

When the end came she was overwhelmed with 
remorse, but still struggling to defend herself. It 
was early morning, and she was alone with him 
at the last. In the wild burstings of affection, 
mingled with self-reproach, she cried: 

“I couldn’t help it, father. I couldn’t help it.” 
They buried her father at Kirk Patrick in the 
family grave of the Craines, which was close to 
the German quarter. Her relations from all parts 
of the island came “to see the old man home.” 
There were uncles and aunts and cousins to the 
third and fourth degree, most of them quite un- 

[ 68 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 

known to her. When the service was over they 
went back to the farm-house, by permission of the 
camp authorities, to hear the will read by the vicar. 
It had been made shortly after the death of Robbie 
and consisted of one line only: 

‘^7 leave all I have to my dear daughter’’ 

The uncles and aunts and cousins, who had no 
claim on the dead man, were shocked at his self¬ 
ishness. 

“Is there no legacy to anybody, parson?” 

“None.” 

“Not so much as a remembrance?” 

“Nothing. Everything goes to Mona.” 

“WeTl leave it with her, then,” they said, and 
rose to go. As they passed out of the house Mona 
heard one of them say to another: 

“It will be enough to make the man turn in 
his grave, though, if the farm goes to a Boche 
some day.” 

That night, sitting late over a dying fire, Mona 
overhears a group of men and boys talking on 
“the street,” outside. They are her servants on 
the farm. Having heard her father’s denunciation 

[ 69 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


of her on Christmas Eve they have since been cir¬ 
culating damaging reports, and now they are busy 
with their own plans for the future. 

“She has killed the old man, that’s the long and 
short of it.” 

“So it is.” 

“I’m working no more for a woman that’s done 
a thing like that.” 

“Me neither.” 

A week later they came to Mona one by one with 
various lying excuses for leaving her. Asking 
no questions she pays them off and lets them go. 

She has been alone for three days when the 
Commandant, with his kind eyes, comes to see 
what he can do. What if he sends some of the 
guard to help her? 

“No, sir, no.” 

“Some of the Germans, then?” 

“N-o.” 

“But, good gracious, girl, you can’t carry on 
the farm by yourself.” 

“I’m strong. I’ll manage somehow, sir.” 

[ 70 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 

“But sixteen cows—it’s utterly impossible— 
utterly!” 

“Half of them are dry now and will have to go 
out to grass. I can attend to the rest, sir.” 

“But won’t you be afraid to live in this house 
alone—a woman, with men like these about you?” 

“I don’t think I will, sir.” 

Half a year has passed. Mona has seen noth¬ 
ing of Oskar since Christmas. With a thrill of 
the heart she hears of the wide liberty he has won 
by his ability and good behaviour. But even in 
that there is a certain sting. He is free of the 
camp now as far as the barbed wire extends; why 
does he not come to see her? Sometimes she feels 
bitter that he does not come, but again the strange 
thing is that sometimes she is sure that if he did 
come she would run away from him. 

All the same, she has a sense of his presence 
always about her. No matter how early she rises 
in the morning she finds that the rough work of the 
farm, unfit for a woman, has been done by other 
hands before she has reached the cow-house. 

[ 71 ] 




THE WOMAN OF KNOGKALOE 


For a long time this sense as of a supernatural 
presence, unseen and unheard, helping her and 
caring for her and keeping guard over her, 
strengthens her days and sweetens her nights. But 
at length something happens which causes her 
courage to fail. 

Rumour has come to the camp that a great 
enemy offensive is shortly to he made on the West¬ 
ern front. To meet the need of it the old guard 
of tried and trusted men are sent overseas, and 
their places filled by a new guard, which seem to 
have been recruited from the very sweepings of the 
streets. 

The captain of this new guard assigned to the 
first three compounds (the nearest to the farm¬ 
house) turns out tp be a brute. His antecedents 
are doubtful. His own men, to whom he is a 
tyrant, say he has been a barman in a public- 
house somewhere, and that a few years before the 
war he was convicted of a criminal assault on a 
woman. 

Mona becomes aware that she is attracting the 
attention of this ruffian. He is asking questions 

[ 72 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


about her, following her with his evil eyes, and 
making coarse remarks that are intended to meet 
her ears. 

“Fine gal! Splendid! What a woman for a 
wife, too!” 

During the day he finds excuses to call at the 
farm-house and engage her in conversation. At 
length he knocks at her door at night. It is late, 
the camp is quiet, nobody is in sight anywhere. 
Before knowing who knocked Mona has opened 
the door. The man makes an effort to enter, but 
she refuses to admit him. He pleads, coaxes, 
threatens and finally tries to force his way into 
the house. 

“Don’t be a fool, girl. Let me in,” he whispers. 

She struggles to shut the door in his face. Her 
strength is great, but his is greater, and he has 
almost conquered her resistance when the figure of 
another man comes from behind. 

It is Oskar. With both hands he takes the 
blackguard by the throat, drags him from the door 
and flings him five yards back into the road, where 
he falls heavily and lies for a moment. Then he 

[ 73 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOGKALOE 


gets up and shambles off, saying nothing, and at 
the next instant Oskar himself, without a word to 
Mona, turns away. 

It is midsummer. The insular horse-racing has 
begun—an event in which the prisoners are keenly 
interested, but of which they are supposed to know 
nothing. Since the changing of the guard the 
morale of the camp has gone down headlong. 
Drink has been getting in—nobody knows how. 
It is first discovered in the First Compound, com¬ 
monly called the millionaire’s quarter. 

Suspecting an illicit traffic the officers raid a 
tent occupied by a German baron, and find half a 
dozen men about a table, with champagne, cigars, 
brandy and every luxury of a fashionable night 
club. A searching inquiry is made by the Com¬ 
mandant. It has no result. The captain of the 
guard, who is zealous in helping, can offer no ex¬ 
planation. 

Later it is discovered that still worse corruption 
is going on in the Second Compound. The sailors 
are quarrelling, fighting and rioting under the in- 

[ 74 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 

fluence of raw spirits, generally rum, probably 
much above proof. Where does their money come 
from? And how does the drink get into the camp? 
For their work in the workshops and on the land 
the prisoners are paid, but their small earnings 
(less a tax to the camp and a small sum for “fag- 
money”) go into the camp bank, to be distributed 
when the war is over. Once more an inquiry is 
fruitless. The men refuse to speak, and the cap¬ 
tain of the guard is bewildered. 

One morning, on rising, Mona sees Oskar Heine 
in the avenue talking through the barbed-wire fence 
to a group of sailors in the Second Compound. 
The men are behaving like infuriated animals, 
clenching and shaking their fists as if vowing ven¬ 
geance. A moment afterwards she sees the cap¬ 
tain, with a quick step, as if coming from the First 
Compound, cross the avenue, disperse the men by 
a fierce command, and then turn hotly on Oskar. 
Mona is too far away to hear what is being said, 
but she sees that Oskar, without answering, walks 
slowly away. 

An hour afterwards, when she is at work in the 

[ 75 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


dairy, she hears harsh cries from the Second Com¬ 
pound. Going to the door she sees a shocking 
scene. The infuriated prisoners, whom she had 
seen talking to Oskar, augmented by at least a hun¬ 
dred others, are hunting a man as if with the in¬ 
tention of lynching him. They are shouting and 
gesticulating, and the man is screaming. They 
have torn his coat off, and the upper part of his 
body is almost naked. He is running to and fro 
as if trying to escape from his pursuers, and they 
are beating him as he flies and kicking him when 
he falls. The soldiers on guard at the gate of the 
compound are racing to the man’s relief and threat¬ 
ening with their rifles, but the rifles are being 
wrenched out of their hands and turned against 
them. The clamour is fearful. The whole com¬ 
pound is in wild disorder. 

“The thief! The cheat! Search him! Strip 
him!” 

Without waiting to think what she is doing, but 
with a frightful apprehension of danger to Oskar, 
Mona runs into the compound (there being no one 

[ 76 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


at the gate to prevent her), and with her strong 
arms, which are bare to the elbows, she struggles 
through the mob of drunken men. 

“Stop! Stand back! You brutes!” 

More from the sound of her voice than from 
the strength of her muscles the prisoners fall away 
and she reaches their victim. He is on the ground 
at her feet, bleeding about the face and head and 
crying for mercy. 

It is the captain of the guard! 

When the miserable creature sees who has res¬ 
cued him he squirms to her feet and calls on her 
to save him. A body of the guard from another 
compound come running up and carry him away, 
and the infuriated men slink off to the cover of their 
quarters. 

Later in the day Mona hears that six of the pris¬ 
oners have been arrested and sent to the lock-up at 
Peel and that Oskar Heine is one of them. Still 
later she learns that they are to be brought up for 
trial in the morning. 

What is Oskar to be charged with? Mona has 

[ 77 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


not been summoned, but she decides to go to the 
trial. She has a presentiment of something evil 
that is to happen to her there, but all the same she 
determines to go. 


[78] 


EIGHTH CHAPTER 


M ona rises next day before the cows have 
begun to call, and as soon as her work in 
the dairy is done she hurries off to Peel. 
^The court-house is as crowded as before with 
guards and townspeople. With difficulty she 
crushes her way into the last place by the door. 

The proceedings have begun and the prisoners 
are standing in the dock with their backs to her— 
five unkempt heads of common-looking sailors and 
Oskar’s erect figure, with his fair hair, at the end 
of them. The Governor is on the bench, and he 
has the High Bailiff and the Commandant on either 
side of him. The captain of the guard, with a 
bandage across his forehead, is in the witness-box. 
He is answering the questions of the advocate for 
the Crown. 

“And now. Captain, tell us your own story.” 
Humbly saluting the court, with many “sirs” 
and “worships” and “excellencies,” the captain 

[ 79 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


tells his tale. It was yesterday about this time. 
He had hardly entered the Second Compound in 
the ordinary discharge of his duty when he was set 
upon, without the slightest warning or provocation, 
by a gang of the prisoners. There must have been 
two hundred of them, but the six men in the dock 
had been the ring-leaders. Five of the six be¬ 
longed to the Second Compound, but the sixth 
came from the Third, and he was the worst of the 
lot. Being a camp captain he was allowed to move 
about anywhere, and he had often abused his lib¬ 
erty to undermine the captain’s authority. 

“How do you know that?” asks the High Bail¬ 
iff. 

“My guard have told me what he has said, 
your Worship, but I heard him myself in this 
case.” 

“What did you hear?” 

“I was behind the baron’s bungalow in the First 
Compound, your Worship, when I heard him tell¬ 
ing the men of the second to lynch and murder 
me.” 

The Governor leans forward and says: 

[ 80 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 

^^You mean that this sixth man has a spite 
against you?” 

“A most bitter spite, your Excellency.” 

‘‘Have you given him any cause?” 

“No cause whatever, your Excellency.” 

“What is his name?” 

“Oskar Heine.” 

“Let Oskar Heine be called,” says the Governor. 

As Oskar steps out of the dock Mona feels hot 
and dizzy. Being a prisoner he is not sworn. 

He stands at the foot of the witness-box, but his 
head is up, and when he answers the questions of 
the advocate appointed to represent the prisoners 
he does not seem to be afraid. 

“You have heard the evidence of the captain.” 

“I have.” 

“Is it true—what he says about yourself?” 

“No, sir, not a word of it.” 

“Did you take any part in the attack that was 
made on him?” 

“None whatever.” 

“Did you tell the other prisoners to do what they 
did?” 


[81] 



THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


‘‘No, I did not; but if I had known as much 
about the captain then as I know now I should have 
done.” 

“Done what?” asks the Governor sharply. 

“Told them to do what they did—and worse.” 

“And what do you know now, if you please?” 

“That he has been cheating and bullying and 
blackmailing and corrupting them.” 

“And if you had known this before what would 
you have told them to do, as you say?” 

“Thrash him within an inch of his life.” 

“You admit that?” 

“I do, sir.” 

The Governor turns to the High Bailiff and 
says: 

“Is it necessary to go further? The man denies 
that he took part in the actual assault, but no evi¬ 
dence could be more corroborative of the captain’s 
story.” 

The High Bailiff appears to assent, and the ad¬ 
vocate for the defence, who had intended to call 
the other prisoners, signifies by a gesture that he 
thinks it is hopeless to do so now. 

[ 82 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 

‘T ask for the utmost penalty of the law 
against the six prisoners,” says the advocate for 
the Crown, ‘Tor a brutal and cowardly assault on 
an officer of the army in the lawful discharge of 
his duty.” 

There is some low talking on the bench which 
Mona, who is breathing audibly, does not hear, 
and then the High Bailiff prepares to give judg¬ 
ment. 

“This is a serious offence. If such riots were 
to be permitted at the encampment all military dis¬ 
cipline would be at an end. Therefore it is the 
duty of the civil authorities in dealing with civil¬ 
ian prisoners . . 

The High Bailiff’s voice is drowned by a noise 
near the door. A woman’s tremulous voice is 
heard to say: 

“Wait a minute, sir.” 

At the next moment Mona is seen pushing her 
way to the front. The advocate for the Crown 
recognizes her, and thinking she comes to support 
his case, he rises and says: 

“This is the young woman I spoke of in my 

[ 83 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


opening as having saved the life of the captain 
from the fury of the prisoners. If it is not too 
late she may be able to say something that will 
throw light on the conduct pf the men and on their 
motive.” 

‘‘No, not on the conduct and motive of the men, 
but on that of the captain,” says Mona. 

There is further murmuring on the bench, and 
then the High Bailiff says: 

“Let her be called.” 

Being in the witness-box and sworn, Mona, with 
the eyes of the judges, advocates and spectators 
upon her, begins to tremble all over, but she an¬ 
swers firmly when spoken to. ‘ 

“You wish to say something about the captain 
—what is it?” 

“That he is a bad man, and a disgrace to the 
army.” 

The Governor puts up his eyeglass and looks at 
her. Then he smiles rather cynically and says: 

“You seem to know something about the army, 
miss. What is the medal you are wearing on your 
breast?” 


[ 84 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 

The Victoria Cross, sir,” says Mona, throwing 
up her head, ‘‘won by my brother when he died in 
the war, and sent home to my father by the King.” 

The eyeglass drops from the Governor’s nose 
and his face straightens. After a moment of si¬ 
lence the High Bailiff says: 

“What you say of the captain—is it from hear¬ 
say or from personal experience?” 

“From personal experience, sir.” 

There is another moment of silence and then the 
High Bailiff says: 

“Tell us.” 

Mona takes hold of the rail of the witness-box, 
and it is seen that her fingers are trembling. She 
tries to begin, but at first the words will not come. 
At length, lifting her eyes as if saying to herself, 
“Oh, what matter about me?” she tells the story of 
the captain’s attempt at a criminal assault upon 
her; how, late at night, when she was alone and 
unprotected he had tried to force his way into her 
house and had almost overcome her resistance 
when Oskar Heine came up and laid hold of him 
by the throat and flung him back into the road. 

[ 85 ] 



THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


“So if there’s any spite,” she says, “it’s not 
Heine’s against the captain, but the captain’s 
against Heine.” 

There is a dead hush in the court-house until 
she has done. Then the High Bailiff looks down 
at Oskar, who is still standing by the witness-box, 
and says: 

“Is this true?” 

Oskar answers in a husky voice: 

“Fm sprry the young lady has said it, sir, but 
it’s true, perfectly true.” 

“It’s a lie,” shouts the captain, tossing up his 
red face defiantly. 

“Is it?” cries Oskar quickly. And then throw¬ 
ing out his arm and pointing to the captain, he 
says: 

“Look at him. The marks of my hands are on 
his throat at this moment.” 

Instantly the captain drops his chin into his 
breast, but not before everybody on the bench has 
seen the black stamp of four fingers and a thumb 
on the man’s red throat. 

The advocate for the defence rises and asks per- 

[ 86 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


mission (things having gone so far) to call the 
other prisoners. 

One by one the five are called and tell the same 
story—that when the horse-racing began the cap¬ 
tain, who went to Belle Vue nearly every after¬ 
noon, enticed them to trust him with their stakes; 
but though they found out afterwards that their 
horses had often won, he had always lied to them 
and kept their money. 

“Heine advised us to complain to the Comman¬ 
dant, but we decided to strip the man and search 
his pockets, and having a drop to drink we went 
further than we intended.” 

“It’s a pack of lies,” roars the captain 

“No, it’s not that neither,” says a voice from 
behind the prisoners. 

It is one of the guard who had brought the men 
to court, and stepping out of the bench at the back 
of the dock, he says: 

“Swear me next, your Worship.” 

“Take care what you’re saying, Radcliffe,” cries 
the captain in a voice that is almost unintelligible 
from anger. “No lies here, remember.” 

[ 87 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


‘‘No, I’ve told enough for you at the camp. I’m 
going to tell the truth for once, Captain.” 

The soldier corroborates the evidence of the 
prisoners, and adds that the guard themselves have 
been similarly cheated, blackmailed and bullied. 

“More than that, it’s the captain himself who 
has been bringing drink into the camp, especially 
into the millionaires’ compound. He is making a 
big purse out of it, too, and only two nights ago, 
when he was in liquor, he boasted that he had five 
hundred pounds in the bank already.” 

After that the proceedings are brought to a quick 
conclusion, the Governor being afraid of further 
disclosures. The six men are sentenced to one 
day’s imprisonment, but having been as long as 
that in custody already they are acquitted. 

And then the trial being over, the Commandant 
addresses the captain, telling him he is not to re¬ 
turn to the camp, but to prepare to be sent over 
the water to-morrow morning. 

“It’s a few men like you who give the enemy 
their excuse for saying we are as bad as they are.” 

[ 88 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


The court having risen, the prisoners are taken 
out between their guard. Oskar Heine passes 
close to the place where Mona is standing, but he 
does not raise his eyes to her. 

Only then, her excitement being over, does Mona 
realize what she has done for herself. The towns¬ 
people are surging out of the court-house, and, as 
they go, they are casting black looks at her. She 
awaits until she thinks they are gone, and then, ven¬ 
turing out, she finds a throng of them, women as 
well as men, on the steps and about the gate, and 
they fall on her with insults. 

“Here she comes!” “The traitor!” “It’s an 
ill bird that fouls its own nest.” “The woman 
might have held her tongue, anyway; not given 
away her own countryman to save a dirty Boche.” 

A hiss that is like the sound of water boiling 
over hot stones follows her down the street and out 
of the town, until she reaches the country. 

Half-way home she is overtaken by the Com¬ 
mandant in his motor-car. He stops to speak to 
her, and his kind face looks serious, almost stem. 

[ 89 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOGBCALOE 


“I’m willing to believe that what you did was 
done in the interest of justice, but all the same I’m 
sorry for you, my girl, very sorry.” 

The six prisoners have arrived at the camp be¬ 
fore her, and a report of what she has done at the 
trial has passed with the speed of a forest fire over 
the five compounds. As she walks up the avenue, 
hardly able to support herself, the brutal sailors of 
the Second Compound, the same that had formerly 
offended her by their vulgar familiarity, rush to 
the barbed wire to lift their caps to her. She does 
not look at them, but hurries into the house, over¬ 
whelmed with shame and confusion. 

To get through the work of the day is hard, and 
when night comes she drops into her father’s seat 
by the fire and sits there for hours, forgetting that 
she has eaten nothing since morning. 

It is all over. The secret she has been strug¬ 
gling so hard to hide even from herself, denying it 
over and over again to her conscience, she has pro¬ 
claimed aloud in public. 

She loves this German—she who had hated all 
his race as no one else had ever hated them! 

[ 90 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 

Everybody knows it, too, and everybody loathes 
her. And her father—if she had killed her father 
before, as people said, she has killed him a sec¬ 
ond time that day, covering his very grave with 
disgrace. 

‘T couldn’t help it,” she thinks, but that brings 
her no comfort now. 

At one moment she tells herself that since she 
has renounced her race she must run away some¬ 
where—she cannot live at Knockaloe any longer. 
But then she thinks of Oskar, that he must remain, 
and cries in her heart: 

“I can’t! I can’t!” 

And remembering what Oskar had said about 
her in court she throws up her head and thinks: 

“Why should I?” 

When the time comes to lock up the house for 
the night she finds a letter which has been pushed 
under the door. It is on prisoners’ notepaper and 
in a handwriting she has never seen before, and it 
contains three words only: 

‘^God bless youF^ 

Instantly, instinctively, she lifts it to her lips 

[ 91 ] 



THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


and kisses it. But at the next moment, as she is 
going upstairs, the old weakness comes sweeping 
back on her. 

‘T couldn’t help it! I couldn’t help it! God 
forgive me!” 


[92] 


NINTH CHAPTER 


I T is Christmas week again—the last Christmas 
of the war. Two Swiss doctors, appointed by 
the warring nations to inspect the Internment 
Camps throughout Europe, have arrived at Knocka- 
loe. 

After going the rounds of the five compounds 
they come to the farm to test the milk. They are 
pleasant men, and Mona asks them to take tea. 

Sitting at the table in the kitchen they talk to¬ 
gether, not paying much attention to Mona, of the 
complaints made by the prisoners, particularly by 
one of them, who had said he had not been able to 
eat the potatoes provided because they had been 
full of maggots, whereupon the sergeant of the 
guard, who had been showing them round, had 
cried: 

‘‘Don’t believe a word of it—the man’s a liar,” 
and then the prisoner had said no more. 

“I dare say the fellow was lying all right,” says 

[ 93 ] 



THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 

one of the doctors, “but that sergeant is a bit of a 
beast.” 

“Is it like that in all the camps—in Germany, 
for instance?” asks Mona. 

“Worse there than anywhere. Some of the of¬ 
ficers in German camps are barbarians without 
bowels of compassion for anybody, and some of 
your British prisoners are living the lives of the 
damned.” 

“But that’s the devilish way of war. It seems to 
make martyrs and heroes of the men who lose by 
it, and brutes and demons of the men who win.” 

“Not always, my friend.” 

“No, not always, thank God!” 

After that they turn to Mona, congratulating her 
on the cleanliness of her dairy, and asking her 
what help she has to keep things going. Being 
afraid to speak of Oskar, she tells them she is 
alone. 

“Wonderful!” says one of them. “But it’s 
what I always say—one person working with his 
heart will do more than ten who are working with 
their hands only.” 


[94] 



THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


“It’s the same on the battlefield,” says the other. 
“And that’s why this country has won the war, and 
the Germans have lost it.” 

“Lost it?” says Mona. “Is the war over, then?” 

“It soon will be, my girl. Your enemy may 
make a last kick, but the war cannot last much 
longer.” 

Mona’s heart leaps up. Can it be possible that 
the war is coming to an end? Then it will soon be 
well with her and Oskar. 

It is not because Oskar is a German, but because 
the Germans are at war with her own people that 
her people look black at her. It is war, not race, 
that is the great obstacle to their love, and when the 
war is over the obstacle will be gone. 

“0 Lord, stop the war, stop it, stop it,” she prays 
every night and every morning. 

There are to be no carols this Christmas, but 
special services are to be held in the camp on 
Christmas Day, and a great Lutheran preacher is 
coming to conduct them. 

On Christmas Eve Mona is carrying a bowl of 

[95] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


oats to a young bull she has put out on the moun¬ 
tain, when she hears the singing of a hymn in the 
prison chapel and she stops to listen. It must be 
the prisoner-choir practising for to-morrow’s serv¬ 
ice, and it must be Oskar who is playing the har¬ 
monium. 

^‘Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott . . .” 

The language is unknown to her, but the tune 
is familiar; she used to sing it herself when she was 
in the choir of the Wesleyan Chapel: 

sure stronghold our God is still . . .” 

The same hymn, the same religion, the same 
God, the same Saviour, and yet . . . How wicked! 
How stupid! 

On Christmas morning Mona has finished her 
work in the dairy when she hears the far-off sound 
of the church bells in Peel, and looking out over 
the camp she sees groups of the prisoners (Oskar 
among them) making their way to the prison 
chapel. 

Suddenly, as she thinks, a new thought comes to 
her. If it is the same religion, why shouldn’t she 

[ 96 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


go to the service? If the guard will permit her 
to pass, why shouldn’t she? 

Almost before she is aware of what she is doing 
she has run upstairs, changed into her chapel 
clothes, and is crossing the avenue towards the 
gate of the Third Compound. 

The camp chapel (half church, half theatre) is 
a large wooden barn with a stage at one end, no 
seats on the floor. On the stage, behind a small 
deal table, the Lutheran pastor, in a black gown, 
is reading the lesson from his big Bible. On the 
floor in front of him are five or six hundred men, 
all standing in lines. They make a pitiful spec¬ 
tacle—some young (almost boys), some elderly 
(almost old), some wearing good clothes, some in 
rags, some well shod, some with their naked feet 
showing through the holes in their worn-out shoes, 
some with fine clear-cut features, and some with 
faces degraded by drink and debased by crime. 
Every eye is on the pastor, and there is no sound 
in the bare place but the sound of his voice. 

Tne silence is broken by the lifting of the latch 

[ 97 ] 



THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


of a door near to the stage. At the next moment 
a woman enters. Everybody knows her—it is 
“the Woman of Knockaloe.” She stands for a 
moment as if dazed by the eyes that are on her, and 
then somebody by her side (she knows who it is, 
although she does not look at him) touches her 
arm and leads her to a chair, which has been hur¬ 
riedly brought in from an ante-room and placed in 
the middle of the front row. 

When the lesson is finished the pastor gives out 
a hymn. It is the same hymn as she heard last 
night, but after the man from the door has stepped 
forward and played the overture on the har¬ 
monium, she finds herself on her feet in the midst 
of the prisoners. 

In full, clear, resonant voices the men are sing¬ 
ing in their German, when suddenly they become 
aware that a woman is singing with them in Eng¬ 
lish—the same hymn to the same tune. 

^^Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott . . .” 
sure stronghold our God is still . . 

The voices of the men sink for a moment, as if 
they are listening, and then, as by one spontaneous 

[ 98 ] 



THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


impulse, they rise and swell until the place seems 
to throb with them. 

When the hymn comes to an end Mona sits and 
the pastor begins his sermon. She can understand 
only a word of it now and again, and her eyes 
wander to the door. Oskar is there. His head is 
up and his eyes are shining. 

‘‘0 Lord, stop the war, stop it, stop it!” 

Summer has come again; the sun rises and sets, 
the’birds sing and nest, the landscape preserves its 
solemn peace, but still the war goes on. The last 
kick of the enemy, which the Swiss doctors had 
foreseen, has been made and it is over. After a 
devastating advance, there has been a still more 
devastating retreat. 

The prisoners in the camp know all about it. 
Their spirits had risen and fallen according to the 
fortunes of their armies at the front. At first they 
were truculent. They talked braggingly about 
vast German forces marching upon London, blow¬ 
ing up Buckingham Palace, putting an end to the 
British Empire, and then turning their attention to 

[ 99 ] 



THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


America. Afterwards they were sceptical. If the 
English newspapers reported German defeats they 
knew better, having received their German news¬ 
papers which reported German victories. Now 
they are sullen. What is the war about, anyway? 
Nothing at all! In ten years’ time nobody will 
know what was the cause of it! 

Mona is in a fever of excitement. Is the war 
coming to an end at last? What does Oskar think? 
Why doesn’t he come to her? Is he still thinking 
he has brought trouble enough on her already? 

At length he comes. It is late at night. She 
hears his voice calling to her in a tremulous tone 
from the other side of the ooen door. 

‘‘Mona!” 

He has never called her by that name before. 

“Yes?” 

She is standing on the threshold, trembling from 
head to foot, never before having been face to 
face with him since the night of her father’s sei¬ 
zure. 

“It’s all over, Mona.” 

“What is, Oskar?” 


[100] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


‘‘Germany is beaten. The Hindenburg line is 
broken, and revolution has begun in Berlin.” 

“Does that mean that the war will soon be at an 
end?’” 

“It must be.” 

She hesitates for a moment, then she says, with 
a quivering at her heart: 

“But surely you are glad of that, Oskar—that 
the war will soon be at an end?” 

He looks into her face and then turns away his 
own. 

“I don’t know. I can’t say,” he answers. 

She looks after him as he goes off. Her eyes 
gleam and her heart throbs. 




[101] 



TENTH CHAPTER 


T he tenth of November, nineteen hundred and 
eighteen. All day long there has been great 
commotion in the officers’ quarters. The 
telephone with Government Office has been going 
constantly since early morning, and there has been 
much hurrying to and fro. 

An internment camp is like a desert in one thing 
—rumour passes over it on the wings of the wind. 
Before midday every prisoner knows everything. 
The Kaiser has been hurled from his throne by his 
own people; the German command have asked 
for an armistice, and the Allied Commander-in- 
Chief has given them until nine o’clock to-morrow 
to sign the terms of peace he has prepared for 
them. 

If they do not sign within that time the war will 
go on to extermination. If they do, the news will 
be flashed over the world immediately. At eleven 
o’clock they will have it at Knockaloe. The guns 

[ 102 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


will be fired in the fort at Douglas, the sirens will 
be sounded from the steamers in the bay, and the 
church bells will be rung all over the island. 

Mona is in raptures. The war is near to an 
end, and all she has prayed for is about to come to 
pass. Yet even at that moment she is conscious 
of conflicting feelings. When she thinks of Rob¬ 
bie, she wants to shout with joy that the war has 
come to a right ending, and the cruel enemy who 
made it, with all its barbarities and horrors, is 
humbled to the dust. But when she thinks of 
Oskar, she feels . . , she does not know what she 
feels. 

Where is Oskar? 

She awakes next morning before the day has 
dawned and while the arc-lamps are still burning. 
The first thing she is aware of is a deep murmur, 
like that of the sea on a quiet but sullen day, which 
seems to come from all parts of the camp. It was 
the last thing she had been conscious of when she 
fell asleep the night before. The prisoners were 
then walking to and fro in their compounds, in and 

[ 103 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


out of the sinister shadows, and talking, talking, 
talking. Could it be possible that they had walked 
and talked all night long? 

What wonder? The day that was about to dawn 
might be the day of doom for them. When night 
came again their Fatherland might have fallen; 
they might be men without a country—mere out¬ 
casts thrown on to an overburdened world. 

When the day breaks and the arc-lamps are put 
out, Mona sees the men moving about like wraiths 
in the grey light. But silence has now fallen on 
them. The ordinary regulations of the camp have 
been relaxed for the day, and they are not re¬ 
quired to go to their workshops. When the bell 
rings for breakfast some of them forget they are 
hungry and remain in the open. 

It is a November day like many another, fine 
and clear and cold and with occasional gleams of 
sunshine on the sea. The cows in the cow-house 
are lowing, the sheep on the hill are bleating. Na¬ 
ture is going on as usual. 

Mona goes to her work in the dairy. When the 
men come for the milk, she can hardly bear to 

[ 104 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


look into their drawn faces. The prisoners in the 
First Compound are standing in groups, and if 
they are talking at all it can only be in whispers. 
The sailors in the Second Compound are standing 
together in crowds, but the old riotous spirit is 
gone; there is no more shouting or swearing. 

The hours drag on. Looking beyond the barbed 
wire boundary of the encampment, Mona sees 
country carts rattling down the high road at a fast 
trot as if going to a fair. Somebody is on the 
church tower of Kirk Patrick doing something with 
the flagstaff. 

At half-past ten the world seems to be standing 
still. The camp is on tiptoe. All over it men are 
looking towards Douglas. Their faces are grim, 
almost ghastly. They seem to be rooted to the 
ground. Sometimes one of them digs his foot into 
the earth like a restless horse tired of waiting, but 
that is the only movement. 

Where is Oskar? What is he doing? 

At length, at long length, there is a certain activ¬ 
ity in the officers’ quarters. Mona distinctly hears 
the ringing of the telephone bell in the Comman- 

[ 105 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


dant’s tent, which is not far from the farm-house. 
In the quiet air and the dead silence she believes 
she hears the Commandant’s voice. 

“Hello! Who’s there? Government office? 
. . . Well? . . . Signed, is it? Good!” 

At the same moment she hears the striking of 
the clock at Peel. And before the clock has fin¬ 
ished striking there comes the deep boom of a gun. 

There can be no mistaking that. It rolls down 
the valley from the direction of Douglas, strikes 
the hills on either side, and then sweeps over the 
black camp towards the sea. 

A moment later comes the screaming of sirens, 
deadened by distance, then the ringing of church 
bells, now far, now near, and then the dull sound 
of wild cheering at Peel, where the people, who 
have been waiting from early morning in the 
market place, are going frantic in their joy, clasp¬ 
ing each other’s hands and kissing. 

The twenty-five thousand prisoners in the camp 
stand silent and breathless for a moment. The 
worst has happened to them—their Fatherland has 
fallen. 


[106] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


The strain is broken by a ridiculous incident. 
A terrier bitch belonging to a German baron in the 
“millionaires’ ” quarters leaps up to the roof of 
his tent and begins to bark furiously at the tumult 
in the air. The little creature’s anger becomes 
amusing. The men look at the dog and then burst 
into peals of laughter. 

A few minutes afterwards the prisoners of the 
First Compound have recovered themselves and 
are shaking hands and congratulating each other. 
After all the war is over and they will soon be free! 
Free to leave this place and go back home—^home 
to their houses'and their wives and children. 

The sailors in the Second Compound are going 
crazy with delight, and behaving like demented 
creatures. They are laughing and singing at the 
top of their lungs, punching each other and boxing, 
playing leap-frog and turning cart-wheels. What 
does it matter about country? Who cares about 
the Fatherland, anyway? All the world is their 
country—all the world and the sea. 

Mona is standing at the door of her dairy, quiv¬ 
ering with emotion. She is like a woman pos- 

[ 107 ] 



THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


sessed. What she has hoped for and prayed for 
has come to pass at last. Peace! Peace! Peace 
over all the earth! Never has the world had such 
a chance before. Never will it have such a chance 
again. The cruelties and barbarities of war will 
be no more heard of, and the senseless jealousies 
and hatreds of races will be wiped out for even 
And then . . . and then . . . 

All at once she becomes aware of somebody be¬ 
hind her. She knows who it is, but she does not 
turn. There is a moment of silence between them, 
and then, in a voice which she can scarcely con¬ 
trol, she says, half-crying, half laughing: 

“You, too, will be free to go home soon, Oskar. 
Aren’t you glad?” 

There is another moment of silence between 
them, and then in a low, tremulous voice Oskar 
answers: 

“No, you know Fm not, Mona.” 

Mona drops her hand to her side, partly be¬ 
hind her, and at the next moment she feels it tight¬ 
ened in a quivering grasp. 


[108] 


ELEVENTH CHAPTER 


A MONTH has passed, yet the camp looks 
much the same as before. Mona had ex¬ 
pected that the prisoners would be liber¬ 
ated by this time, but they are here still. The 
Commandant is said to be waiting for orders. 

Meantime regulations have been relaxed. The 
men are no longer restricted to the various com¬ 
pounds. There is no limit to their liberty of mov¬ 
ing about, except the big gates, guarded by sol¬ 
diers, and the three lines of barbed wire by which 
the camp is surrounded. Why not? Nobody is 
likely to attempt to escape. Within a few weeks 
everybody will be free. 

Mona has all the help she can do with now. The 
prisoners are constantly about the farm-house, do¬ 
ing anything they can for her. They show her 
photographs of their wives and children and get 
her to count up the savings that are coming to 
them. 


[ 109 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


At length comes word that the Peace Congress 
has begun and that the Commandant has received 
his orders. Two hundred and fifty of the pris¬ 
oners are to be sent over the water every day until 
the camp is empty. 

But there is a condition attaching to the libera¬ 
tion. Mona hears of it first from three prisoners 
belonging to distant compounds, who are talking 
outside the house. To her surprise they are 
speaking not only in English, but in British dia¬ 
lects. 

‘‘They ca’ me a Jarmin,” says one, “but what 
am I? I were browt to Owdham when I were five 
year owd and now ’am fifty, so ’am five year Jar- 
min and forty-five English. Yet they’re sending 
me back to Jarmany.” 

“I’m no so sure but my case isna war’ nor that, 
though,” says the other. “I came to Glasgie when 
I was a bairn in my mither’s arms, and I’ve lived 
there all my life. I married there and my two 
sons were born there. And now that I’ve lost both 
of them fighting in the British army, and my wife’s 
dead of a broken heart and I’ve nobody left be- 

[ 110 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOGKALOE 


longing to me, they’re for sending me back to a 
foreign country.” 

“Aw well,” says the third man, speaking with a 
snatch of the Anglo-Manx, “I wouldn’t trust but 
my case is worse nor either of yours. I’m Ger¬ 
man bom, that’s truth enough, but I’ve lived in this 
very island since I was a lump of a lad, and may¬ 
be I’m as Manx myself as some ones they make 
magistrates and judges of. More than that, my 
only son was born here, and when he grew up to 
be a fine young fellow, and they said his King and 
country needed him, he was one of the first to join 
up and go off to the war. Well, what d’ye think? 
Twelve month ago he was wounded and invalided 
home, and then, being no use for foreign service, 
they sent him to Knockaloe as one of the guard— 
to guard, among others, his own father. Think of 
that now! My son outside the barbed wire and me 
inside! And one of these days he’ll have to march 
me down to Douglas and ship me off to Germany, 
where I’ve neither chick nor child, no kith nor kin 
. . . Yes, my lad, that I used to carry on my back 
and rock in his cradle!” 


[Ill] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


Mona is aghast. Something seems to creep be¬ 
tween her skin and flesh. Never before, in all the 
long agony of the war, with its blood and tears and 
terror, has she heard of anything so cruel. What 
a mockery of the Almighty! Race, race, race! 
Mother and author of half the wars of the world— 
when, oh when would the Father of all living wipe 
the blasphemous word out of the mouths of Chris¬ 
tian men? * 

But the conversation Mona has overheard cuts 
deeper and closer than that even. If all German- 
born prisoners are to be sent back to Germany, 
Oskar will have to go, and what then? 

That night a knock comes to her door. It is 
Oskar himself. His eyes are wild and his lips are 
trembling. 

“You’ve heard of the new order?” he asks. 

“Yes. Will you have to go back also?” 

“I must. I suppose I must.” 

The first batch to go are from the “million¬ 
aires’ ” quarters. Being rich they have reconciled 
themselves to the conditions. Park Lane or the 

[ 112 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


Thiergarten—^what matter which? In their black 
clothes, their spats and fur-lined coats, and with 
their suit-cases packed in a truck, they march off 
merrily. 

The next to go are from the Second Compound, 
and they make a different picture—ill-clad, ill- 
shod, without an overcoat among them, with noth¬ 
ing in their pockets except the little money they 
have drawn at the last moment from the camp 
bank, and nothing in their hands except the canvas 
bags which contain all their belongings. 

It is a miserable January morning, with driz¬ 
zling rain and a thick mist over the mountains. At 
a sharp word of command the men go tramping to¬ 
wards the gate, a silent and melancholy lot, totally 
unlike the singing and swaggering gang who came 
up the avenue four years ago. 

Later in the day the captain of the guard (the 
new captain) who has seen the men off by the 
steamer tells Mona a wretched story. The prison¬ 
ers had passed through Douglas with heads down 
like men going to execution; they had been drawn 
up like sheep pn the pier, while the ordinary pas- 

[ 113 ] 



THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


sengers went aboard to their cabins, and then they 
had been hurried down the gangway to the steer¬ 
age quarters. And as the steamer moved away 
they had looked back with longing eyes at the 
island they were leaving behind them. 

“Poor devils! They used to talk about the 
camp as a hell, but inside six months they’ll be 
ready to crawl on their stomachs to get back to it.” 

“But why . . . why are they all to be sent to 
Germany?” asks Mona. 

“It’s the order of the congress, miss. No coun¬ 
try wants to harbour its enemies—not a second 
time—unless they have something to make them 
friends.” 

“But if they have?” 

“Well, if a German has an English wife and 
an English business . . 

“They let him remain—do they?” 

“I believe they do, miss.” 

Mona’s heart leaps, and a new thought comes 
to her. If Oskar does not wish to go back to 
Germany, why shouldn’t he stay here and farm 
Knockaloe? 


[ 114 ] 



THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


Next morning, after the third gang has gone, she 
is on her way to her landlord’s. Her last half- 
year’s rent is due, and then there’s the question of 
the lease, which runs out in November. 

It is a beautiful morning with blue sky and 
bright sunshine. The snowdrops are beginning to 
peep and the yellow eyes of the gorse are show¬ 
ing. As she goes down the road with a high step 
she is thinking of her landlord’s answer to her 
father when, four years ago, he asked what was to 
happen to the farm after the war was over: 
‘‘Don’t trouble about that. You are here for life, 
Robert—you and your children.” 

She meets her landlord at the gate of his house. 
He is in his church-going clothes, having just re¬ 
turned from Peel, where he has been sitting on the 
bench as a magistrate. 

“The rent, I suppose?” he says, and he leads 
her into the sitting-room. 

She counts it out to him in Treasury notes, and 
he gives her a receipt for it. Then he rises and 
makes for the door, as if wishing to be rid of her. 
She keeps her seat and says: . 

[ 115 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


“What about the lease, sir?” 

“WeTl not talk about that to-day,” says the 
landlord. 

“Fm afraid we must. I have to make import¬ 
ant arrangements.” 

The landlord looks embarrassed. 

“But if you say it will be all right when the 
time comes, we can leave it for the present, sir,” 
says Mona. 

The landlord, who has reached the door and 
is holding it open, puts on a bold front and says: 

“Well, to tell you the truth, Fve had to make 
other arrangements.” 

Mona is thunderstruck, and she rises rigidly. 

“You don’t mean to say, sir, that you are . . . 
letting the farm over my head?” 

“And if I am, why shouldn’t I? It’s mine, I 
suppose, and I can do what I like with it.” 

“But you promised my father—faithfully prom¬ 
ised him when the farm was turned into a 
camp . . 

“Circumstances alter cases. Your father is 
dead and so is his son. . . 

[ 116 ] 



THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


“But his daughter is alive, and what has she 
done . . 

“Don’t ask me what she’s done, miss.” 

“But I do, sir, I do.” 

“Then if you must have it, you must. I want 
a good man of my own race to farm my land„ 
not an enemy alien.” 

Mona is speechless for one moment, choking 
with anger; at the next she is back on the road, 
weeping bitterly. 

Oskar is in the avenue when she returns to it, 
and seeing she is in trouble he speaks to her. 

She tells him what has happened, omitting what 
was said about himself. 

“Your family have lived in Knockaloe for gen¬ 
erations, haven’t they?” he says. 

“Four generations.” 

“And you were born there, weren’t you?” 

“Yes.” 

“It’s a shame—a damned shame.” 

Mona is crushed. Knockaloe is lost to her. 
And this is the peace she has prayed and prayed 
for! 


[117] 



THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


One day passes, then another. Every morning 
Mona sees a fresh batch of prisoners leaving the 
camp, and her heart sinks at the sight of them. 
Oskar’s turn will come some day. It tears her to 
pieces to think of it—Oskar going off at that mel¬ 
ancholy pace, down the avenue and round by Kirk 
Patrick. 

At length a spirit of defiance takes possession 
of her. Knockaloe is dear to her by a thousand 
memories, but it is not the only place on the island. 
She has heard of a farm in the north that is to be 
let in November. It is large, therefore it is not 
everybody who can stock it, but she can, because 
she has always thought it her duty to put every¬ 
thing she has earned during the war into cattle to 
-meet the requirements of the camp. 

She is upstairs in her bedroom, making ready 
for a visit to the northern landlord, when she hears 
the loud clatter of hoofs in the avenue. Long 
John Corlett, who used to come courting her for 
the sake of the stock, is riding a heavy cart-horse 
up to the house. He sees her and, without trou¬ 
bling to dismount, he calls to her to come down. 

[ 118 ] 



THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


Resenting his impudence, she makes him wait, but 
at length she goes out to him. 

“Well, what is it, John Corlett?” 

“You’ll have heard, my girl, that Fm the new 
tenant of Knockaloe?” 

“I haven’t; but if you are, what of it?'’ 

“Fve come to ask you how long you want to 
stay.” 

“Until the lease runs out—^what else do you 
expect, sir?” 

“But why should you? The camp will be 
empty before that time comes, and what can you 
do with your milk when the men are gone?” 

“I can do what I did before they came, if you 
want to know.” 

“Oh, no, you can’t. You’ve lost your milk run^ 
and you can never get it back again.” 

“Who says I can’t?” 

“I say so. Everybody says so. Ask any* 
body you like, woman—any of your old cus¬ 
tomers.” 

Mona is colouring up to the eyes. 

“Then tell them I don’t care if I never 

[119] 




THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


can,” she says, and turns back to the house. 

“Wait! There’s something else, though. What 
about the dilapidations?” 

“Dilapidations?” 

“According to the agreement with the Govern¬ 
ment the landlord has to make good the damage 
to the houses and the tenant the injury to the 
land.” 

It is true—she had forgotten all about it. 

“Twenty-five thousand men here for four years 
—it will take something to put the land into cul¬ 
tivation.” 

In a halting voice she asks Corlett what he 
thinks it will cost, and he mentions a monstrous 
figure. 

“Three years’ rent of the farm—that’s the best 
I can make it.” 

Mona gasps and her face becomes white. 

“But that would leave me without a shilling,” 
she says. 

“Tut, woman! With the big rent you’ve had 
from the Government you must have a nice little 
nest-egg somewhere.” 


[120] 




THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 

But I haven’t. Fve put everything into 
stock.” 

The hulking fellow slaps his leg with his riding 
whip and makes a long whistle. 

“Well, so much the better if it’s all on the 
land.” 

Then he drops from his saddle to the ground, 
and comes close to Mona as if to coax her. 

“Look here, Mona woman, no one shall say 
John Corlett is a hard man. Leave everytMng on 
the farm as it stands, and we’ll cry quit^ this very 
minute.” 

Mona looks at him in silence for a moment. 
Then she says, breathing rapidly: 

“John Corlett, dp you want to turn me out of 
my father’s farm a beggar and a pauper?” 

“Chut, girl, what’s the odds? There’s some¬ 
body will be wanting you to follow him to foreign 
parts when he goes himself—though you might 
have done better at home. I’m thinking.” 

Mona’s breath comes hot and fast and her face 
grows orimson. Then she falls on the man like a 
fury. 


[121] 



THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


^‘Out of this, you robber, you thief, you dirt!” 

The big bully leaps back into his saddle. 
Snatching at his reins, he shouts that if she won’t 
listen to reason he will ‘‘put the law on her,” and 
not a beast shall she take off the land until his 
dues as incoming tenant are paid to him. 

“Out of it!” cries Mona, and she lifts up a 
stick that lies near to her. 

Seeing it swinging in the air and likely to fall 
on him, the man tugs at his reins to swirl out of 
reach of the blow, and the stick falls on his horse’s 
flank. The horse throws up her hind legs, leaps 
forward, and goes down the avenue at a gallop. 

The rider has as much as he can do to keep his 
seat, and the last that is seen of him (shouting 
something about “you and your Boche”) is of his 
hindmost parts bobbing up and down as his horse 
dashes through the gate and up the road towards 
home. 

Some of the guard who have been looking on 
and listening burst into roars of laughter. Mona 
bursts into tears and goes indoors. If her stock 

[ 122 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 

is to be taken, the island, as well as Knockaloe, is 
lost to her! 

Late that night Oskar comes again. His eyes 
are fierce and his face is twitching. 

“I’ve heard what happened,” he says, “and if 
I were a free man I should break every bone in 
the blackguard’s skin. But I can’t let you go on 
suffering like this for me. You must give me up^ 
Mona.” 

It is the first time an open acknowledgment of 
their love has passed between them. Mona is 
confused for a moment. Then she says, 

“Do you want me to give you up, Oskar?” 

He does not answer. 

“To see you go away with the rest, and to think 
no more about you?” 

Still he does not answer. 

“Do you?” 

“God knows I don’t,” he says, and at the next 
moment he is gone. 


[123] 


TWELFTH CHAPTER 


T hree nights later Oskar comes again. As 
usual he will not enter the house, so she has 
to stand at the door to speak to him. His 
eyes are bright and he is eager and excited. 
“Mona, I have something to suggest to you.” 
“Yes?” 

“It’s not to be wondered at that people brought 
up in a little island like this should have these 
hard feelings and narrow ideas. But the English 
are not like that. They are a great, great people, 
and if you are willing to go with me to Eng¬ 
land. . . .” 

“What are you thinking of, Oskar?” 

He tells her more about himself than she has 
ever yet heard. He is an electrical engineer, and 
before being brought to Knockaloe he had been 
chief engineer to a big English company on the 
Mersey, at a salary of a thousand a year. When 
the war broke out his sympathies had been dead 

[ 124 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


against his own country, chiefly because of “that 
quack, the Kaiser.” 

“Oskar!” 

“It’s true. I can’t account for it. I was se¬ 
cretly ashamed of it in those days, but I would 
have joined up in the British Army if they would 
have had me. They wouldn’t!” 

On the contrary, the authorities had called him 
up for internment. Then his firm, which had been 
loathe to lose him, had tried to obtain his exemp¬ 
tion. They had failed, and when the time 
came for him to go the chairman of the com¬ 
pany had said: “Heine, we’re sorry you have 
to leave us, but if you want to come back when 
the war is over, your place will be waiting for 
you.” 

“But could he ... do you think it possi¬ 


ble. . . . 


99 


“Certain! Oh, he’s a great old man, Mona, and 
if he were to break his word to me I should lose 
faith in human nature. So I . . . I. . . .” 
“Well?” 

“I intend to write to him, telling him I shall 

[ 125 ] 



THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


soon be at liberty, and if you will only agree to 
go with me. . . 

He stops, seeing tears in her eyes. Then, in a 
husky voice, he says: 

‘T’m sorry to ask you to leave your island.” 

“It is turning me out, Oskar; that’s the bitterest 
part of it.” 

“Then you will go to England with me?” 

“Yes,” she says, and he hurries off in high 
spirits to write his letter. 

During the next week Mona tries hard to feel 
happy, but little by little vague doubts oppress 
her. One day she overhears scraps of a conversa¬ 
tion between the Commandant and the Governor, 
who are arranging for the breaking up of the camp 
and the disposal of its portable property. As 
they stand in the avenue they are talking about the 
Peace Conference. 

“It’s a pity,” the Commandant is saying, “but 
it has always been my experience that the first 
years of a peace are worse than the last years of a 
war.” 

And the Governor is answering: “All the 

[ 126 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 

same, we should be fools to trust those traitors 
again. We have beaten the German brutes, and 
what we have got to do now is to keep them 
beaten.” 

“Fm not like that, your Excellency,” says the 
Commandant. ‘T’ll fight my enemy with the best, 
but when the fighting is over I want to forget and, 
if I can, forgive. I was at the front in the early 
days, and after a bad bit of an engagement I 
came upon a German officer in a shell hole. He 
was in a terrible state, poor fellow, and we 
couldn’t take him in, so I decided to stay with him. 
His mind was perfectly clear, and he said, 
‘Colonel’ (I was colonel in those days), ‘don’t you 
think this is strange?’ ‘What’s strange?’ I asked. 
‘Well,’ said he, ‘if you and I had met in the 
trenches I suppose you woidd have tried to kill 
me for the sake of Motherland, and I should have 
tried to kill you for the sake of Fatherland, yet 
here you are trying to save me for the sake of . . . 
Brotherland.’ More of the same kind he said in 
those last hours, and when the end came he was 
in my arms and his head was on my breast, and I 

[ 127 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


don’t mind telling you I . . . kissed him.” 

Mona felt a thrill going through and through 
her. Brotherland! That was what all the world 
would be soon. And then Oskar and she, living 
in Liverpool, in their great love would be happy 
and unashamed. 

That night Oskar comes back. His face is pale 
and his lips are quivering. He tries to speak, but 
finding it hard to dp so he hands her a letter. It 
is from the engineering firm on the Mersey. 

Sir, —^We have received your letter of the 10th inst. 
addressed to our late chairman, who died during the 
war, and regret to say in reply to your request that you 
should be taken back in your former position, that it 
is now filled to our satisfaction by another engineer, 
and that even if it were vacant we should find it impos¬ 
sible to re-engage you for the reason that feeling against 
the Germans is so strong among British workmen that 
none of them would be willing to serve under you, and 
the fact that you had married an English wife, as you 
say, would increase, not lessen, their hostility. 

Yours, etc. 

‘T wouldn’t have believed it,” says Oskar. 

[ 128 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


‘Tt’s the war,” says Mona. ‘‘Will it never, 
never end?” 

“Never,” says Oskar, and he turns away with 
clenched teeth. 

Mona goes to bed that night with a heavy heart. 
If English workmen will not work with Oskar, 
England, also, is closed to them, and Brotherland 
is a cruel dream. 

Another week passes. The disbanding of the 
camp goes on as usual, with its toll of two hundred 
and fifty men daily. The Fourth and Second 
Compounds are now beginning to be called upon. 
The men of the Third are being kept to the last, 
because many of them, like Oskar, are engineers, 
and therefore useful in removing the electric 
plant, which is to be sold separately. But their 
turn will come soon and then . . . what then? 

A week later Oskar comes again. His face is 
thin and pinched and his eyes are bleared as from 
want of sleep, but his spirits are high, almost hys¬ 
terical. 

“Mona,” he says, “I know what we have to do.” 

[129] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


“What?” 

“The English may be hard and unforgiving, but 
the Germans are not like that.” 

“The Germans?” 

“Oh, I know my people. They may fight like 
fiends and demons—they do, I know they do—^but 
when the fighting is over they are willing to be 
friends with their enemies.” 

“What are you thinking of now, Oskar?” says 
Mona, but she sees what is coming. 

“If you were willing ... if you could only 
find it possible to go with me to Germany . . .” 

“Germany?” 

Mona feels dizzy. 

“It’s a sin and a shame to ask you to leave your 
native country, Mona, but since it is turning you 
out, as you say . . .” 

Mona is covering her ears. 

“Don’t speak of it, Oskar. I can’t listen to 
you! It’s impossible.” 

Oskar is silent for a moment, then he says in a 
tremulous voice: 

“I would make it up to you, Mona. Yes, I 

[130] 




THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


swear to God I should make it up to you. I should 
dedicate every day and hour of my life to make 
it up to you. You should never regret it—never 
for one single moment.” 

‘‘But how could I go . . 

“Just as other women are going. Lots of the 
men are taking their German wives back with 
them. Wliy shouldn’t I take my English wife?” 

“Wife?” 

“Certainly. The chaplain would marry us.” 

“The chaplain?” 

“Yes, in the camp chapel, late at night or early 
in the morning, with two of my comrades as wit¬ 
nesses.” 

“Have you spoken to him, then?” 

“I have, and he says that being made in a Lu¬ 
theran church by a Lutheran clergyman, it would 
be a good marriage according to German law, so 
Germany would receive you.” 

“But where . . . where should we go to?” 

“My mother’s first.” 

“Your mother’s?” 

“Where else? Oh, she’d love it! She’s the 

[131] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


best mother a man ever had. Do you know, she 
has written to me every single week since I came 
here. And now she’s only living to welcome me 
home.” 

‘‘But, Oskar, are you sure she will . . 

“Welcome you? Of course she will. She’s 
growing old, poor soul, and has been lonely since 
my sister’s death. After we’re married I’ll write 
to say I’m bringing another daughter home to love 
and comfort her. . . .” 

“Write first, Oskar.” 

“As you please. It isn’t necessary, though. 
I know quite well what she’ll say. But even if 
she couldn’t welcome you for yourself—and why 
shouldn’t she?—she wpuld for my sake, anyway.” 

“All the same, write first, Oskar.” 

“Very well, I will. And if her answer is all 
right, you’ll go?” 

“Ye-s.” 

“Heavens, how happy I am! What have I done 
to deserve to be so happy?” 

Mona watches him as he goes off, with his quick 

[132] 



THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


step, until he is lost in the sinister shadows cast by 
the big arc-lamps that cut through the night. Then 
she goes indoors and tries to compose herself. It 
takes her a long time to do so, but at length, be¬ 
ing in bed, she remembers a beautiful thing she 
had read to her father in the days when he lay 
upstairs: 

Whither thou goest, I will go. Thy people 
shall be my people, and thy God my God.’’ 

For days after that Mona finds herself singing 
as she goes about her work. And at night, when 
she is alone, she is always thinking of her forth¬ 
coming life in Oskar’s home. She can scarcely 
remember her own mother, except that she was an 
invalid for years, but she sees herself nursing 
Oskar’s mother, now that she is old and has lost 
her daughter. 

‘T mustn’t go empty-handed, though,” she 
thinks. 

That brings back the memory of Long John Cor- 
lett and his threat of “putting the law” on her. 

It must have been stuff and nonsense about the 

[133] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


dilapidations eating up the stock, but she will see 
an advocate and have things settled up imme¬ 
diately. 

“I’m afraid the man is right, miss.” 

It is the advocate whom Mona is consulting. 

“It was a bad bargain your poor father made 
with the Government, and the only people likely 
to profit by it are the landlord and the incoming 
tenant.” 

“Then what do you advise me to do, sir?” 

“Sell up your stock, have the dilapidations 
valued, pay the money due, and start afresh on 
whatever is left.” 

“Dp it for me at once, please,” says Mona, and 
she sets off home with an easy, if not a happy, 
mind. 

But hardly has she got there and changed into 
her dairy clothes, and begun on her evening milk¬ 
ing in the cow-house, with the watery winter sun 
coming in on her through the open door, when she 
sees Oskar approaching with a look that strikes to 
her heart. His face is white, almost ghastly, and 

[ 134 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


he is walking like an old man, bent and feeble. 

‘What has happened?” 

“There! What do you think of that?” he says, 
and with a grating laugh he gives her a letter. 

“Is it from your mother?” 

“Look at it.” 

“Is she refusing to receive me?” 

“Read it. It’s written in English—for your 
benefit, apparently.” 

Mona reads: 

“Oskar, —The contents of your letter have distressed 
me beyond measure. That a son of mine should think 
of marrying an Englishwoman—one of the vile and 
wicked race that killed his sister—is the most shocking 
thing that has ever happened to me in my life.” 

There is more of the same kind—that if Oskar 
attempts to bring his Englishwoman to Germany 
his mother will refuse to receive her; that if she 
did receive her every self-respecting German 
woman would cry shame on her and shun her 
house for ever; that the feeling in Germany against 
the abominable English is so bitter, because of their 

[ 135 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 

brutal methods of warfare and their barbarous 
ideas of peace (starving hundreds of German chil¬ 
dren by their infamous blockade, drowning Ger¬ 
man sailors under the sea in their submarines, 
burning German airmen alive in the air, and now 
ruining everybody by crushing demands for rep¬ 
arations which will leave Germany a nation of 
beggars), that no decent house would shelter any 
of them. 

“Tell your Englishwoman from me that if she marries 
you and comes to this country she will be as a leper 
whom nobody will touch. Never shall she cross this 
threshold! Oskar, my son, I love you, and I have 
waited all this time for you; I am old, too, and have 
not much longer to live, but rather than hear you had 
married an Englishwoman I would see you dead and 
buried.” 

When Mona looks up from the letter, Oskar is 
gazing into her face with a ghastly smile. 

“That’s a nice thing to send a fellow after four 
years’ imprisonment, isn’t it?” he says, and then 
he breaks into heart-breaking laughter. 

[ 136 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


‘T was so sure of her, too. I thought she would 
do anything for me—anything.” 

Again he laughs—wildly, fiercely. 

‘‘What has happened to the woman? Has the 
accursed war taken all the heart out of her? The 
German people, too—have they all gone mad? 
Starving German children, drowning German sail¬ 
ors, burning German airmen! Good Lord, has 
the whole nation gone crazy?” 

Mona feels as if she were choking. 

“She is old and hasn’t much longer to live, and 
just because I’m going to marry the best girl in 
the world and take her home with me . . .” 

But his laughter breaks into sobs and he can 
say no more. Mona feels the tears in her throat 
as well as in her eyes, but at length she says: 

“Oskar, it’s all my fault. I’ve come between 
you. You must go home without me—to your 
country and your mother.” 

Oskar lifts his broken face and cries: 

“Country? Mother? I’ve got no country and no 
mother either. Go home to them? Never! 
Never in this world!” 


[137] 






THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


At the next moment he has gone off, with long 
strides, before Mona can reach out her hand to 
stop him. 

Being alone, she has to go on with her work as 
usual—the “creatures” have to be milked and 
foddered. But after the men from the com¬ 
pounds have been served (only three of them now,) 
she has time to think out her situation. 

Since Oskar’s mother refuses to receive her, 
Germany also is closed to them. Because she 
loves Oskar, and Oskar loves her, and they are of 
different races and their nations have been at war, 
they are to be hunted through the world as out¬ 
casts, and no place is to be left for them. 

“Poor Oskar! It’s hardest for him, though,” 
she thinks. 


[138] 


THIRTEENTH CHAPTER 


T he men of the Fourth and Fifth Compounds, 
three-quarters of the guard and many of 
the officers have gone, when a stranger 
comes to the camp to make a bid for the purchase 
of the booths and huts. 

After a tour of the wooden buildings he arrives 
at the farm-yard, and steps on to the mounting- 
block to take a general view, and at the same mo¬ 
ment Mona comes to the door of her dairy. 

He is an American, a cheerful and rather free- 
spoken person, and he says, with a smile on his 
lips, by way of excuse for opening a conversation: 
“I guess the farm-house is not for sale, is it?” 
“You must ask the landlord about that, sir,” 
says Mona. 

“Not you also? You’re the tenant of the farm, 
aren’t you?” 

“Yes, but I’m leaving it presently.” 

“Ah, I remember! I’ve heard something about 

[ 139 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 

you. And where are you going to when you leave 
here?” 

‘T don’t know yet, sir.” 

He looks at her as if measuring her from head 
to foot, and then says, with another smile: 

“Come to my country, girlie. We have some 
strapping young women out west, but we can do 
with a few more of the same sort, I guess.” 

Mona is startled. Obvious as the word is, 
it comes like an inspiration. America! “The 
melting-pot of the nations!” All the races of the 
world are there. They must live in peace to¬ 
gether or life could not go on. 

When Oskar comes that night she tells him what 
the stranger has said, and his big, heavy, sleep¬ 
less eyes become bright and excited. 

“Why not? Why shouldn’t we? That great 
free country! What a relief to leave all the 
d-d mess of this life in Europe behind us!” 

There is a difficulty, though. He has heard 
that America refuses to admit people who have 
been in prison. He has been four years in an in- 

[ 140 ] 



THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 

ternment camp—^will America allow him to land? 
He must ask the chaplain. 

The following night Oskar comes back with a 
still brighter face. 

‘Tt’s all right, Mona. Internment is not im¬ 
prisonment in the eyes of American law.” 

But there is one other difficulty. America re¬ 
quires that every immigrant shall have something 
in his pocket to prevent him from becoming a bur¬ 
den on the new country. 

^Tt’s not much, but I have too little. If I had 
been a free man I should have earned four thou¬ 
sand pounds in the time I’ve been here, but when 
I leave the camp I shall only have fifty.” 

Mona is overjoyed—at length she can do some¬ 
thing. 

‘‘That’s no difficulty at all, Oskar. The auction 
is to come off soon, and after I’ve paid what I owe 
I shall have enough for both of us.” 

It is the day before the auction, and Mona is 
gathering up the stock and bringing them down to 

[ 141 ] 



THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


the houses—the beasts she had put out on the 
grass, the “dry” cows that are stretched pn their 
bellies chewing the cud, the sheep that are bleat¬ 
ing, and the early lambs that are baa-ing. 

She is going up the mountain to fetch the young 
bull to which she has taken a bowl of wheat twice 
a week throughout the winter. A new wave of 
hope has come to her, a golden radiance is shining 
in the future, and she is singing to herself as she 
climbs through the heather. 

Suddenly, when she reaches the top of the hill, 
by the tower called “Corrin’s Folly,” she hears 
fierce animals snorting, and at the next moment 
sees that three bulls are fighting. One of them is 
her own young bull, small and lithe, the two others 
are old and large and black and have iron rings 
in their nostrils. She remembers the old ones. 
They belong to John Corlett, and must have leapt 
over the boundary to get at the young one, and are 
now goring it fearfully. 

The fight is frightful. The young bull is bleed¬ 
ing horribly and trying to escape. It leaps over 
the wall of the little cemetery around the tower 

ri42] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 

and makes for the land on the other side of it 
which goes down by a steep descent to precipitous 
cliffs, with the broad sea lying below at a terrible 
depth. But the old bulls, making hoarse noises 
from their nostrils, are following it up on either 
side and intercepting it. As often as the hunted 
animal runs to the right they gore it back to the 
left, and when it flies to the left they gore it back 
to the right. 

At length the young bull stands for a moment, 
with its wild eyes flashing fire and its face towards 
the cliffs. And then, with a loud snort as pf de¬ 
spair and defiance, it bounds forward, gallops 
straight ahead, and leaps clear over the cliff-head 
into the sea. The old bulls look after it for a mo¬ 
ment with heaving nostrils and dilated eyes, and 
then begin to graze as if nothing had 
happened. 

Mona has stood helpless and trembling while 
the fight has lasted, and when it is over and she 
comes to herself she finds Oskar standing behind 
her. He has been working on the roof of the 
tower, to remove the electric wires which have 

[ 143 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 

been attached to it, and from there he has seen 
everything. 

‘Tt was horrible, wasn’t it?” 

“Horrible!” 

“So cruel and cowardly.” 

“Yes,” he says, from between his clenched 
teeth, “and so damnably human.” 

Mona looks at him. They go down the hill to¬ 
gether without saying any more. 

At last it has come, the day of the sale. The 
Commandant has permitted it to be held at the 
farm, although the camp is not yet entirely cleared. 
It is his last act before leaving, for he is going 
away that morning. Mona sees him driving off 
in his motor car, hardly recognizable in his 
civilian clothes. As he passes the farm-house he 
raises his hat to her—an English gentleman, every 
.inch of him. 

Towards eleven o’clock there is much commo¬ 
tion about the farmstead. The guards (they have 
had orders to help) are bringing the big beasts 
out of the houses into the “haggard” and driving 

[ 144 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


the sheep and lambs into pens. There is a great 
deal of bleating and lowing. Mona, who is com¬ 
pelled to hear, but cannot bring herself to see what 
is going on, is indoors, trying not to look or listen. 

At length there is the sound of voices. The 
Advocate, with the auctioneer and his clerk, are 
coming up the avenue, and behind them are many 
farmers. Long John Corlett, in his chapel clothes, 
is prominent among the latter, talking and laugh¬ 
ing and hobnobbing with everybody. Mona sees 
the look of impudent certainty in the man’s empty 
face. She also sees Oskar, who is behind the 
barbed wire of the Third Compound, with a face 
that is white and fierce. 

After a short period for inspection the auction 
begins. The Advocate reads the conditions of 
sale (the whole of the stock on the farm is to be 
sold without reserve), and then the auctioneer 
steps up to the top of the mounting-block, while 
the clerk takes his place at the foot of it, and the 
farmers form a circle around them. There are 
the usual facetiae. 

“Now, gentlemen, you’ve got the chance of your 

[ 145 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


lives this morning. John Corlett, I know you’ve 
come to buy up everything, so get your purse¬ 
strings loosened. Mr. Lace, thou knows a good 
beast if anybody on the island does, and there are 
lashings of them here, I can tell thee.” 

The first animal to be led out by the guard into 
the circle of the spectators is a fine milch cow, five 
years old. Mona remembers that she gave forty 
pounds for it in the middle of the war. It is 
knocked down for twenty. 

“What name?” 

“John Corlett.” 

For a long half-hour there are scenes of the 
same kind. Every fresh beast put up is knocked 
down at half its value, and always, after the crack 
of the auctioneer’s hammer, there comes the same 
name—“John Corlett.” 

At length Mona’s anger becomes ungovernable. 
It is conspiracy, collusion! John Corlett has 
bought up all competitors! She rises from her 
seat by the fire with the intention of throwing up 
the window and shouting her protest. But while 
her hand is on the sash she sees Oskar at the other 

[ 146 ] 



THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


side of the barbed wire, striding hastily away, and 
she returns to her seat. 

The auction goes on for an hour longer. Mona 
does not look out again, but she hears everything 
that is said outside, every word, almost every whis¬ 
per. 

The farmers are beginning to laugh at the mo¬ 
notony of the proceedings. At length there is a 
murmur of conversation between the auctioneer 
and the Advocate, and the auctioneer says, “Very 
well, if you wish, sir,” whereupon the Advocate 
raises his voice and cries: 

“Gentlemen, this is going too far. If I hadn’t 
announced that the sale would be without reserve 
I should stop it on my own responsibility. Come 
now, be Manxmen. What’s doing on you any¬ 
way? Is it the war—or what? Men, we all 
knew old Robert Craine. He is dead. Let us be 
fair to his only daughter.” 

After that there is no more laughter, but there 
is less bidding and the results are the same. The 
sale, which was expected to last until evening, is 
over by lunch-time. 


[147] 



THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


“Gentlemen,” says the auctioneer, “I thank you 
for your attendance. It’s just as I expected— 
John Corlett has bought in all the stock on the 
farm.” 

“And much good may it do him,” says the Ad¬ 
vocate. 

“I might have given her more for it without the 
auction, sir,” says John Corlett. 

“And so you might, or you should have been 
d-well ashamed of yourself.” 

Then Mona hears the sound of trapesing feet 
on the avenue and the various voices of people 
passing under her window. 

“Serve her right, though! We want no Huns 
settling here on the island.” 

“No, nor no good Manx money going over to 
Germany neither.” 

A moment later the Advocate comes into the 
house. 

“Fm sorry the sale has not been as good as we 
expected, miss. The total receipts will scarcely 
cover the valuation.” 


[148] 



THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


‘‘Then there’s nothing left for me—nothing 
whatever?” 

“Nothing! I’m sorry, very sorry.” 

Mona, who had risen, sinks back into her seat 
as if stunned. After a while, the Advocate having 
gone, she hears the barking of dogs, the shouting 
of men, the bleating of sheep and the lowing of 
cattle. The stock are being driven back to the hill 
by the servants of their new owner. 

At length there is silence. It is not at first that 
Mona is able to realize the full meaning of what 
has happened, but at last it falls on her. America 
is closed to her now. And that means that there 
is no place left to her in the world! 

Oskar comes towards bed-time. He is biting 
his lips and his eyes are bloodshot. She looks up 
at him helplessly—all the strength of her soul has 
gone out of her. 

“You’ve heard the result?” 

“Yes, I have heard,” he says, speaking between 
his teeth. 


[149] 




THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


‘T can’t think hpw people could be so unkind.” 

‘‘Unkind!” 

He is laughing bitterly, fiercely. 

“One’s nearest neighbours—the people one has 
known all one’s life.” 

“Oh, your people are no worse than any other— 
not an atom. People are the same everywhere. 
It’s the war, Mona. It has drained every drop of 
humanity out of them.” 

He is laughing again, still more bitterly and 
fiercely. 

“War! What a damned stupid, idiotic thing 
it is—and the people who make it! Patriots? 
Criminals, I call them! Crowned criminals and 
their mountebank crew conspiring against God 
and Nature.” 

He smites the doorpost with his fist and says: 

“But the war is not the worst by a long way.’’ 

“What is, Oskar?” 

“This damnable peace that has followed it. 
People thought when the peace came they could 
go to sleep and forget. What fools! Think of 
it! Miserable old men spouting about a table, 

[ 150 ] 




THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


gambling in the fate of the young and the unborn; 
forgetting their loss in precious human lives, but 
wrangling about their reparations, about land, 
about money, which the little mother rocking her 
baby’s cradle will have to pay the interest of in 
blood and tears some day; setting nation against 
nation; brewing a cauldron of hate which is hard¬ 
ening the hearts and poisoning the souls of men 
and women all the world over.” 

Mona, who has hardly heard what he has said, 
is still looking up at him helplessly. 

‘‘We couldn’t help it, could we, Oskar?” 

Oskar, recovering his self-command, pity-struck 
and ashamed, lifts up her work-stained hands and 
puts them to his lips. 

“Forgive me, Mona.” 

“We struggled hard, didn’t we?” 

“Yes.” 

“But since God had put it into our hearts we 
couldn’t resist it, could we?” 

“No.” 

“And now He doesn’t seem to care, does He?” 

“No! He doesn’t seem to care,” says Oskar. 
And then he goes off with head down. 

[ 151 ] 


FOURTEENTH CHAPTER 


I T is the Saturday before Easter. 

Looking out of her bedroom window in the 
morning, Mona sees nothing but a desolate 
black waste where the crowded compounds have 
been. Four unborn springs and summers buried 
in the bosom of the blackened fields—when, oh 
when will they grow green again? 

Only in the Third Compound is there any ac¬ 
tivity. Few men are left even there. Oskar has 
told her he is to leave with the last batch, but the 
time for him to go is coming on inexorably. 

The “houses” are empty, the “creatures” no 
longer call, and the unnatural silence of the farm¬ 
yard oppresses her. As long as she had the work 
of three farm hands to do her strength never failed 
her, but now that she has only to attend to her¬ 
self she is always tired and weary. 

The spring is beginning to appear, and through 
the open door she sees that the daffodils are 

[ 152 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 

blooming in the little patch of garden in front of 
the house. This reminds her of what she did on 
the day of her father’s burial, and she plucks 
some of the flowers, intending to lay them on his 
grave. 

There is nobody in the avenue when she walks 
through—between the lines of harbed-wire fences 
that have no faces behind them now—and past the 
empty guards’ houses near to the gate. There is 
nobody on the road either, as far as to the lych- 
gate of Kirk Patrick. / 

There he lies, her father, his upright head-stone, 
inscribed to “Robert Craine of Knockaloe,” cheek 
by jowl with the sloping marbles that mark the 
graves of the Germans who had died during the 
four years of internment—all his race-hatred 
quenched in the peace of death. 

Only a few yards away, on the grass of a mound 
that had no stone over it, is the glass dome of ar¬ 
tificial flowers which she herself had placed on the 
grave of Ludwig, the boy with the cough. The 
glass is cracked, no doubt by the snow and frost of 
winter, and the white flowers have perished. Poor 

[ 153 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 

father! Who knows but in a little while his dust 
may mingle with that of the German boy in the 
mother-bosom that bore them both! Oh God, how 
wicked is war, how cruel, how senseless! 

Mona is coming out of the churchyard when she 
hears the tapping of a mason’s chisel and then sees 
the mason himself behind a canvas screen, which 
shelters him from the winnowing of a light breeze 
that is blowing up from the sea. He is at work on 
a large block of granite, lettering a long list of 
names. 

After a moment she speaks to him, and he tells 
her what the block is—the base of a cross to the 
men of the district who fell in the war. It is to be 
set up outside the gate of the parish church at 
Peel. The ceremony of unveiling it is to be on 
Easter Monday—that is to say, the day after to¬ 
morrow. The time is to be nine in the morning, 
because that is the hour when the boys of Peel and 
Patrick who have survived the war are expected to 
return home by the steamer that is to leave Liver¬ 
pool on Sunday night. The Lord Bishop of the 
Island is to unveil the memorial, and all the clergy 

[ 154 ] 



THE WOMAN OF KNOGKALOE 


and Town Commissioners and big people of the 
two parishes are to be present. All the men, too, 
and their mothers and wives and children. 

‘Tt will be a grand sight, girl. I suppose you 
won’t be going, though?” 

Mona catches her breath and answers: 

‘‘No.” 

After another moment she begins to look over 
the names. All four sides of the base are full of 
them, and the mason seems to be lettering the last. 
She tries to find her brother’s name and cannot do 
so. At length, not without an effort, she says: 

“But where is Robbie’s name?” 

The mason pauses in his work, and then answers: 

“Robbie Craine’s? Well, to tell you the truth, 
it is not on the list they made out for me.” 

“They—who are they?” 

“Well, the Bishop and the clergy and the Town 
Commissioners and so on.” 

“But my brother died in the war, and won the 
Victoria Cross, didn’t he?” 

“Maybe he did.” 

“You know he did. Then what has he done 

[ 155 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 

that his name is not in the list with the rest?” 

The mason, preparing to resume his work, re¬ 
plies: 

‘‘Maybe it’s what somebody else has done that 
has kept him out of it.” 

The word falls on her like a blow on the brain, 
and she goes off hurriedly. As she turns the cor¬ 
ner of the road she hears the thin ring of the 
mason’s chisel, and it sounds like the thud of 
doom. Is she, and everybody who has ever be¬ 
longed to her, to be wiped out of living memory? 
What has she done to deserve it? But after a mo¬ 
ment of fierce anger her former helplessness comes 
back on her and she begins to cry. 

“I can’t tell in the world why good people 
should be so unkind.” 

Later in the day a new strength, the strength 
of defiance, comes over her. Oskar may say it is 
the war, and even the peace, that has poisoned 
people’s souls, but if it was God who put it into 
her heart to love Oskar, and into Oskar’s heart 

[ 156 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


to love her, it is for God to see them through. He 
will, too—certainly He will. If she has to become 
a servant girl herself and scrub her fingers to the 
bone, why shouldn’t she? God will open people’s 
eyes some day, and then the Bishop and the clergy 
and the Town Commissioners will have to be 
ashamed of themselves. 

“I’m a good woman—why shouldn’t they?” 

Being without stock of her own now she has to 
go into town that evening to buy provisions for 
housekeeping. The shop-keepers show her scant 
courtesy, but she puts up with no neglect and no 
disrespect. It is almost dark when she has fin¬ 
ished her shopping, and then, for a near cut back 
to Knockaloe, she passes, with her string bag in her 
hand, through a by-street which has an ale-house 
at one corner. 

There she comes upon a tumultuous scene. In 
front of a small house, with the door standing 
open, a crowd of women and children have 
gathered to listen to a wild quarrel that is going 
on within. There is a man’s voice swearing, a 

[ 157 ] 




THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 

girl’s voice screaming and an old woman’s plead¬ 
ing. 

“So this is what my maintenance from the army 
has been spent on—keeping you and your . , . 
German bastard.” 

“It’s not my fault, Harry; I tried to get another 
place and nobody would have me.” 

“Neither will I have you, so get out of this house 
quick.” 

“Leave me alone! Leave me alone, I tell you! 
If you touch my child I’ll scratch your eyes out.” 

“Out you go, you harlot, and to . . . with you.” 

“Harry! Liza! Harry! Harry! Children!” 
cries the old woman. 

Mona asks the women of the crowd what is go¬ 
ing on. 

“Don’t you know, miss? It’s Liza Kinnish, the 
girl with the German baby. Her brother has come 
home from the war, and he is turning her out— 
and no wonder.” 

A number of men, half-intoxicated, come from 
the ale-house, but they make no attempt to inter¬ 
vene, and at the next moment a bare-headed soldier, 

[ 158 ] 


I 



THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


also in drink, with the upper buttons of his tunic 
torn open, conies from the house, dragging after 
him a girl with a baby in her arms and her dis¬ 
ordered hair streaming on to her shoulders. 

‘‘Out you go—you and your d-German of¬ 

fal!” 

Flinging the girl into the street, the man returns 
to the house and clashes the door behind him. 

“Let me in!” screams the girl, hammering at 
the door with her spare hand. 

The door opens and the soldier comes to the 
threshold. 

“Look here, you . . . I’m not going to have 
the fellows sneering at me when they come home 
on Monday morning, so if you are not gone to . . . 
out of this inside two minutes . . .” 

“Why did you come home?” cries the girl. 
“You beast! You brute! Why didn’t the Ger¬ 
mans kill you?” 

At that the soldier, foaming at the mouth, is 
lifting his clenched fist to the girl when Mona, 
crushing through the crowd of women and throw¬ 
ing down her string bag, lifts her own hand and 

[ 159 ] 



THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 

strikes the man full in the jaw, and he falls like 
a log. 

Then, while he squirms on the ground, stunned 
and winded, she turns on the men from the ale¬ 
house, who have previously been drinking with 
him and taunting him and egging him on. 

“And you!” she cries. “What are you? Are 
you men? You white-livered mongrels! Your 
mothers were women, and they’d be ashamed of 
you.” 

By this time the soldier has scrambled to his 
feet and, with blood in his mouth, he is trying 
to laugh. 

“Ha, ha, ha! So this is another of them, is it? 
She’s in the same case herself, they’re telling me. 
Oh, I’ve heard of you, my lady. You used to 
think great things of yourself, but when the par¬ 
son marries you there’ll be three of you before 
him at the altar, as the saying is. Ha, ha, ha!” 

The men laugh and some of the women begin 
to titter. A harder blow than she had dealt the 
soldier had fallen upon Mona. She stands for a 

[ 160 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


moment as if turned to stone, then picks up her 
bag, sweeps through the crowd and hastens away. 

So this is what people think of her! After all 
the struggling of her heart and the travailing of 
her soul, this is what people think! Oh, God! 
Oh, God! 

She had been sleeping badly of late, but that 
night she hardly sleeps at all. Towards the grey 
dawning she has a sense of Robbie being in the 
room with her. He is wearing his officer’s uni¬ 
form, just as in her mind’s eye, when she felt so 
proud, she had often seen him. She knows he is 
dead, and she thinks this is his spirit, and it has 
come to reproach her. 

“Mona, if anybody had told me three years ago 
that such a thing would happen I should have killed 
him. Yes, by God, I should have killed him.” 

Mona tries to speak, but cannot. 

“Rob . . .” 

“Lord, how proud I was of you! When they 
told me I had won the Victoria Cross I laughed 
and said, ‘My sister would have won it long ago 

[ 161 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


if she had been here.’ Nobody hated the Germans 
as you used to do, but now that you’ve given your¬ 
self to one of them . . 

“Rob ... Rob . . .” 

“What else could you have done it for? Every¬ 
body believes it, too. Father believed it, and it 
was that that killed him.” 

Again Mona tries to cry out and cannot. 

“Hide yourself away, Mona. Hide your sin 
and shame in some miserable corner of the earth 
where nobody will know you. You’ve broken my 
heart, and now . . .” 

“Robbie! Robbie!” 

Her own voice awakens her. The rising sun 
shines on her as she sits up in bed in her wretched¬ 
ness. 

Only a dream! Yet it has told her everything. 
This is the end. Here has her road finally led 
her. Her love is doomed. Life, as well as the 
world, is now closed to her. But to stand in the 
pillory as long as she lives for a sin she has not 
committed—it is too much! Better die—a thou¬ 
sand times better! 


[ 162 ] 




THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 

When she asks herself how, it seems so simple. 
And when she thinks of the consequences they 
seem so slight. There will be nobody to care— 
nobody except Oskar. He will be better without 
her, and can go home when his time comes. Either 
of them could get on alone. It is only together 
that they are not allowed to live, and since only one 
of them can live, it is so much better it should be 
Oskar. 

There is a pang in the thought that Oskar will 
suffer. Yes, he will be sorry. But he will get 
over it. And when he is at home and the first 
pang of losing her is past and he wants to be 
happy, being so young and such a man, perhaps 
. . . who knows. . . . 

But no, she cannot think of that. 


[ 163 ] 


FIFTEENTH CHAPTER 


E aster day— one of the God-blest mornings 
in the sweet of the year when it is happiness 
enough to be alive. 

Mona is setting her house in order and feeling 
as if she were doing everything for the last time. 
When she thinks she has finished she suddenly re¬ 
members that she has not had breakfast. But 
that does not matter now. How thirsty she is, 
though! So she brews herself a pot of tea and 
drinks two strong cups of it. 

The church bells begin to ring, and she deter¬ 
mines to go to church—also for the last time. 
Why not? It is true she intends to do something 
which good people would condemn, but it is no 
use thinking of that now. 

How sweet the air outside is, with the odour of 
the violets and the gorse and with that tang of 
salt that comes up from the sea! The young 
birds, too, how merrily they are singing! It is 
a pity! A great pity! 

[ 164 ] 


0 




THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


She is late. The bells have ceased to ring, and 
there is nobody on the road. It had taken her 
long to dress—she had felt so tired and had had to 
sit down so often. 

The service has begun when she reaches the 
church. Through the inner door, which is half 
open, she can see the congregation on their knees 
and hear the vicar reading the General Confession, 
with the people repeating it after him. She can¬ 
not go in just now, so she stands by the porch and 
waits. 

The Sunday-school children, kneeling together 
on the right of the pulpit, are bobbing their heads 
up and down at intervals—they are so happy and 
proud in their new Easter clothes. She, too, used 
to be proud and happy in her Easter clothes. It 
is almost heartbreaking. Life looks sweet now, 
death being at the door. 

When the voices cease and she is about to en¬ 
ter, some of the congregation look round at her. 
She feels as if they are thinking of her as the 
kind of woman-penitent who in the old days used to 
stand at the door of the church in her shame. That 

[ 165 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


stops her, and she remains where she is standing. 

The service goes on—the psalms and lessons 
and hymns appropriate to the day. At length 
comes the last hymn before the sermon: 

^‘Jesu, lover of my soul, 

Let me to thy bosom fly . . ^ 

Mona has known it all her life, yet it seems as 
if she had never understood it until now. 

^*While the gathering waters roll, 

While the tempest still is high^ 

She is in tears before she is aware of it. The 
sermon begins, and the vicar’s voice comes out 
to her in the open air and mingles with the twit¬ 
tering of the birds in the trees and the bleating 
of the lambs in the fields. 

It is about the last days of Jesus—His death 
and resurrection, the hatred of His enemies and 
the desertion of His friends—all the dreadful yet 
beautiful story. 


[ 166 ] 




THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


“He might have avoided His death, hut He did 
not do so. He died of His own free will. Why? 
Because He was confirmed in the belief that His 
death would save the world.” 

Jesus died to show that nothing mattered to man 
but the welfare of his soul. Riches did not mat¬ 
ter, rank did not matter, poverty did not matter. 
It was nothing to Jesus that He was hated and 
despised and friendless and homeless and alone 
and cast out of the family of men. Nothing mat¬ 
tered to Him but love, and because He loved the 
world He died for it. 

“And that is why all suffering souls come to 
Him—^have been coming to Him through all the 
two thousand years since His pilgrimage here be¬ 
low—^will continue to come to Him as long as 
the world lasts! ^Let me to thy bosom fly.^ ” 

Before the vicar’s voice has ceased, and while 
he is pronouncing the blessing, Mona is hurrying 
home. There are no tears in her eyes now, and 
in her heart there is only a great exaltation. 

Hitherto she has been thinking of what she in¬ 
tends to do as something that God would have to 

[ 167 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


forgive her for. Not so now. If Jesus died 
of His own free will, if He died for love, why 
shouldn’t she? And if by dying He saved the 
world, would it not be the same with her also? 

In the dizzy whirl of her brain she can see no 
difference. What she intends to do ceases to be 
a sin and becomes a sacrifice. If the world is 
full of hatred, as the consequence of the war, her 
death may save it. She is only a poor girl, and 
nobody on earth may ever know what she has done 
and why she has done it, yet God will know. 

But Oskar? She had not intended to tell Os¬ 
kar. He loved her so much that he might have 
tried to dissuade her. Just to slip away when the 
time came for him to go back to his own country 
—that had been her plan. But she could not rec¬ 
oncile herself to this now—not now, after this 
great new thought. Oskar must know every¬ 
thing. 

Hours pass. She is sure Oskar will come to¬ 
day—quite sure. While waiting for him she 
drinks many cups of tea, forgetting that she has 

[ 168 ] 




THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


not eaten since yesterday. At last he comes. As 
usual, it is late at night, and she is so weak from 
emotion and want of food that she can scarcely 
reach the door to open it. 

“May I come in?” 

“Yes, indeed, come.” 

He steps into the house, never having done so 
since the night of her father’s seizure, and sits by 
her side before the fire. His face is lividly white, 
his lips are twitching, and his voice is hoarse. 

“What’s to do with you, Oskar?” 

“Nothing. Don’t be afraid. I have come to 
tell you something.” 

“What?” 

“I’ve just had my orders. I am to go away in 
the morning.” 

“Tn the morning?” 

“Yes, with the last batch. The last of the offi¬ 
cers and guard are going too, so the camp will 
be empty after to-morrow.” 

Mona’s heart is heating hard, and she tries to 
ease it by asking an irrelevant question. 

[ 169 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


‘‘What are the men saying?” 

He laughs bitterly, and his words spurt out of 
his mouth. 

“The men? Oh, they’re saying they’ll soon be 
here again. They want to stay in England, and 
if they are to be sent back to their own overbur¬ 
dened country, to suffer and to starve, they will 
return some day with hatred in their hearts.” 

“That means another war some day, doesn’t 
it?” 


“It does, and when that day comes God help the 
poor old world and everything in it.” 

In her excited mood Mona thinks she knows bet¬ 
ter, but she cannot speak of that yet; and Oskar, 
too, as if trying to gain time, goes on talking. 

“The world had its great chance at the end of 
the war, Mona, but then came those damnable old 
men with their conferences making a peace that 
was worse than the war itself. And now the 
churches—look at the churches who have been told 
to teach that there’s no peace under the soldier’s 
sword, standing by while the world is rushing on 
to destruction! What snares! What hypocrisy! 


[ 170 ] 



THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


What spiritual harlotry! Why don’t they burn 
down their altars and shut their doors and be hon¬ 
est? . . . But that is not what I came to say— 
to tell you.” 

‘‘What is, Oskar?” 

He hesitates for a moment, and then in a flood 
of words he says: 

“I don’t want to frighten you, Mona. You 
must not let me frighten you. I should never for¬ 
give myself if . . . But you are all I have now, 
and ... I can’t go away and leave you behind 
me. ... I simply can’t. . . . It’s impossible, 
quite impossible.” 

“But if they force you, Oskar?” 

Oskar laughs again—it is wild laughter. 

“Force me? Nobody can be forced if only he 
has courage.” 

“Courage?” 

“Yes, courage. . . . Don’t you see what I’ve 
come to tell you, Mona? Come, don’t you? 
When the idea came to me first I thought you 
might be afraid and perhaps faint and even try 
to turn me from my purpose, so I made up my 

[ 171 ] 



THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


mind to say nothing. But when the order came 
to-night I said to myself, ‘No, she’s not like some 
women. She’s brave; she’ll see there’s nothing 
else for it.’ ” 

Mona sees what is coming, and her heart is 
throbbing hard, but she says: 

“Tell me. It’s better that I should know, 
Oskar.” 

With that he gets closer to her and speaks in a 
whisper, as if afraid the very walls may hear: 

“When they look for me in the morning I shall 
be gone. . . . Don’t you understand me now?— 
gone! So I’ve come to-night to say farewell. We 
are meeting for the last time, Mona.” 

He looks at her, thinking she will cry out, per¬ 
haps scream, but her eyes are shining. All the 
pain in the thought of their parting has passed 
away with a mighty rushing. 

“Oskar,” she says, “don’t you think it would be 
just as hard for me ... to stay here after you 
were . . . gone?” 

The tears are in Oskar’s eyes now, for flesh is 
weak and his wild heart is softening. 

[ 172 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


“What would become of me without you, 
Oskar?” 

“Don’t say that, Mona.” 

“But if ... if it’s inevitable that you should 
go, if there is nothing else for it, can’t we . . . 
can’t we go together?^^ 

“Together?” He is looking searchingly into 
her shining face. “Do you mean . . .?” 

She takes his hand. It is trembling. Her own 
is trembling also. 

“Oskar, do you remember the fight of the bulls 
on the cliff-head?” 

“When the old ones wouldn’t let the young one 
live, and he had to . . .” 

She bows her head. He is breathing 
rapidly. She lifts her eyes and looks at 
him. They are silent for a moment, then he 
says: 

“My God, Mona! Do you mean that? . . . 
Really mean it?” 

“Yes.” 

And then she tells him everything—all her great, 
divine, delirious project. 

[ 173 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


He gasps, and then his face also shines, as little 
by little her dream rises before them. 

“Do you think that vain and foolish, Oskar . . . 
that we should do as He did, of our own free will, 
to save the world from all this hatred and bitter¬ 
ness?” 

Oskar throws up his head; his eyes are stream¬ 
ing. 

“No! No! For God’s in His heaven, Mona.” 

And then, these two poor creatures whom the 
world has cast out, clasped hand in hand, and see¬ 
ing no difference in the wild confusion and delir¬ 
ium of their whirling thoughts, talk together in 
whispers of how they are going to save the world 
from war, and the bitter results of war, by doing as 
He did who was the great Vanquisher of death and 
Redeemer of the soul from sin—give up their lives 
in love and sacrifice. 

“So even if the churches are all you say, there’s 
Jesus still. . . .” 

“Yes, yes, there’s Jesus still, Mona.” 


[ 174 ] 


SIXTEENTH CHAPTER 


A t five o’clock next morning a young man and 
a young woman are climbing the hill that 
stands between the camp and the sea. 

There is only a pale grey light in the sky; the 
last stars are dying out; the morning is very 
quiet. Sometimes a cock crows in the closed-up 
hen houses of the neighbouring farms; sometimes 
a dog barks through the half-darkness. Save for 
these there is no sound except that of the soft 
breeze which passes over the earth before day¬ 
break. 

The two walk side by side. They can hardly 
see each other’s faces, and are holding hands to 
keep together. Partly because of the darkness and 
partly for reasons obscure even to themselves, they 
are walking slowly, and pausing at every few 
steps to take breath. They are trying to make 
their journey as long as possible. It is to be 
their last. 


[ 175 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


“Forgive me, Oskar,” says Mona. 

“There is nothing to forgive, Mona. It had 
to be.” 

“Yes, it had to be. There was no other way, 
was there?” 

“No, there was no other way, Mona.” 

What remained of the internment camp had 
not been stirring when they passed through the 
lane that led from the farm to the grazing land, but 
by the time they are half-way up the hill there 
are sounds from the black ground below them. 
Looking back, they see groups of vague figures 
moving about in the Third Compound. A little 
later they hear the call of a bugle—the last batch 
of prisoners is being gathered up. Still later, 
when the light is better, there is the sharp ringing 
of a bell—the roll has been called and Oskar is 
missing. 

“It’s for me,” he says, and they stop. 

By this time they are near to the wall of the 
little cemetery that surrounds the tower, and to 
avoid being seen they wait under its dark shelter. 

There is a period of suspense in which neither 

[ 176 ] 




THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


speaks, but after a while they see the black-coated 
prisoners form into file, with their yellow-clothed 
guard on either side, and march out of their com¬ 
pound. 

‘‘They’ve given me up,” says Oskar, and they 
both breathe freely. 

They hear the word of command, deadened by 
distance. Then they see the procession of men 
pass down the avenue and through the big outer 
gates into the high road. At first there is only the 
dull thud of many feet on the hard ground, but 
as the guards close the gates behind them, and the 
sharp clang of the iron hasps comes up through 
the still air, the prisoners break into a cheer. 

It is wild, broken, irregular cheering, as of fierce 
disdain, and it is followed by defiant singing— 

^‘Glo-ry to the brave men of old, 

Their sons will copy their virtues bold, 

Courage in heart and a sword in hand . . .” 

A few minutes later the dark figures are hid¬ 
den by trees, and as they turn the corner of the 

[ 177 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


road by Kirk Patrick their voices die away. 

They are gone—back to their own country, 
which wants them not. The camp that has been 
their prison for four years is empty. It lies, in 
the quickening daylight, like a vast black scar on 
the green face of the mountain. 

Suddenly a new thought comes to Mona. They 
may still avoid death. Life may yet be open to 
them. 

‘‘Oskar,” she says, speaking in a rapid whisper, 
“now that the officers and the guard have gone, 
isn’t it possible that we could escape to somewhere 
. . . where we should be unknown . . .” 

‘‘Impossible! Quite impossible, Mona.” 

“Ah yes, I suppose it is,” she says, and they 
rise to resume their journey. 

But just then, in the first rays of morning, from 
a cottage that is between them and the sea, she 
hears the voice of a woman singing. She knows 
who the woman is—one of her former maids, who 
has lately been married to a farm labourer. Per¬ 
haps her husband has gone to his work in the 
fields, and she is out in their little garden, gather- 

[ 178 ] 



THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


ing up the eggs of the hens that are clucking. How 
happy she must be! 

For a moment Mona’s heart fails her. She for¬ 
gets the great thoughts of yesterday, and regrets 
the loss of the simple joys that are reserved for 
other women. 

‘Tt seems a pity, though, doesn’t it?” she says. 

“Do you regret it, Mona?” says Oskar, looking 
round at her. But at the next moment her soul 
has regained its strength. 

“No! Oh, no! It had to be. . . . And then 
there is our great hope, our wonderful idea!” 

“Yes, our great hope, our wonderful idea.” 

They continue their climbing, still holding each 
other’s hands, but rarely speaking. Sometimes 
she stumbles, but he holds her up. The larks 
are singing now, and the young lambs on John 
Corlett’s farm are bleating. Far down, on the sea¬ 
ward side, sheltering in the arms of its red cliffs, is 
the little white town of Peel. It is beginning 
to smoke for breakfast. 

“Oskar, do you still think that when all this is 
over, and the hatred and bitterness have died out 

[ 179 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 

of people’s hearts, they will make war on each 
other no longer?” 

‘‘Yes, in the years to come, perhaps—or they 
must wipe themselves off the earth, Mona.” 

“And do you think that God will accept our 
sacrifice?” 

“Fm sure He will—because we shall have died 
for love and given up all.” 

“Yes, we shall have died for love and given up 
all,” says Mona, and after that she liberates her 
hand and walks on firmly. 

As they approach the crest of the hill the deep 
murmur of the sea comes over to them, and when 
they reach the top its salt breath smites their faces. 
There it lies in a broad half-circle, stretching from 
east to west, cold and grey and cruel. 

Mona trembles, and the revulsion which comes 
to the strongest souls at the first sight of death 
seizes her for an instant. In a faltering voice she 
says: 

“It won’t be long, will it, Oskar?” 

“No, it won’t be long, Mona.” 

“Only a few moments?” 

[ 180 ] 



THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


‘‘Yes, only a few moments.” 

“And then we shall be together again for ever?” 

“For ever.” 

“Oh, I shan’t care if at the cost of a few mo¬ 
ments of suffering I can be happy with you for 
ever. 

She is not afraid now. In front of them are 
the heather-clad slopes that go down to the pre¬ 
cipitous cliffs. They clasp hands again and walk 
forward. Tears are in their eyes, but the light of 
heaven is there also. 

In a few minutes more they are on the cliff 
head. It overhangs the sea, which is heaving and 
singing in its many voices, seventy feet below. 
The sun is rising, and the sky to the east is flecked 
with crimson. There is nothing else in sight any¬ 
where, and no other sound except the cry of the 
sea fowl on the rocks beneath. 

“This is the place, isn’t it?” 

“This is the place, Mona.” 

“Shall we do as we intended?” 

“Yes, let us do as we intended.” 

And then these two children of the universal 

[ 181 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


Father, cast out of the company of men, separated 
in life and about to be united in death, go through 
the burial service which they have appointed for 
themselves. 

First, they kneel on the cliff edge, as close as 
they can get to it, and repeat their prayer: 

“Our Father, who art in Heaven , , . 

Geheiligt wird dein name . . . 

Forgive us our trespasses . . . 

As we forgive them that trespass against 

us , . 

Then they rise, and, standing hand in hand, with 
their heads up and their faces to the sea, they 
sing their hymn: 

“Jesu, lover of my soul . . . 

Lass mir an dein brust liegen . . 

Then Oskar unfastens his coat, and taking oflF 
the long belt he is wearing he straps it about both 

[ 182 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 

of them. They are now eye to eye, breast to 
breast, heart to heart. 

“The time has come, hasn’t it, Oskar?” 

“Yes, the time has come, Mona.” 

“I can kiss you now, can’t I?” 

He puts his arms tenderly about her and kisses 
her on the lips. She kisses him. It is their first 
kiss and their last. 

“God bless you for loving me, Oskar.” 

“And God bless you, too, Mona. And now 
good-bye!” 

“No, not good-bye. Only—until then.” 

“Until then.” 

The sun rises above the horizon in a blaze of 
glory. The broad sea sings her everlasting song. 
The cliff head is empty. 

After a while, when the sky is blue and the 
morning sunlight is dancing on the waters, a 
steamer, decked with flags from stem to stern, 
comes round the headland on the south. It is 

[ 183 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 

crowded with soldiers, who are crushing to star¬ 
board to catch their first sight of the town which 
lies behind the headland to the north. 

There is the sharp crack of a rocket from the 
lifeboat house at Peel, and then a band on the 
steamer begins to play, and the soldiers to sing in 
rapturous chorus: 

^^Keep the home’fires burning . . , 

t 

Till the boys come home . . 

A little later the church bells begin to ring. 
They ring louder and louder and faster and faster 
every moment, as if pealing their joyous message 
up to the cloudless sky: 

‘Tea€e! Peace! Peace!” 


[ 184 ] 


CONCLUSION 


Queenstown, April, 1919 .—Rather more than 
a week ago the bodies of a young man and a young 
woman, tightly strapped together, closely clasped 
in each other’s arms, and floating out towards the 
ocean, were picked up by Kinsale fishermen as 
they were returning to harbour in the early hours 
of morning. Inquiries into identity appear to 
show that the young man was a German of good 
family and superior education, who, until recently, 
was a prisoner at Knockaloe, the well-known in¬ 
ternment camp for alien civilians in the Isle of 
Man, and that the young woman was a native of 
the island, a girl of fine character, the owner of 
a farm which is connected with the camp and called 
by the same name. 

It is known that, in spite of the difference of 

race and notwithstanding the difficulties of their 

position, they became strongly attached, and that 

when, shortly after the Armistice, the order was 

given that prisoners of war should be returned 

[ 185 ] 



THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 


to the countries of their origin, the young German 
tried, first, to remain in England with the girl, 
whom he wished to marry, and afterwards to be 
allowed to take her back with him to Germany. 
Failing in both efforts, he fell into a deep melan¬ 
choly, which seems to have communicated itself 
to the young woman, and to have resulted in a 
death-pact. 

When the time came for the camp to be closed 
the young man had disappeared, and later it was 
discovered that the young woman was also missing. 
How they escaped is unknown, but it is assumed 
that they threw themselves into the sea from the 
cliffs of Contrary, the most westerly headland in 
Man, and, being caught in the Gulf stream, which 
flows close to the island at that point, were car¬ 
ried down to the waters in which they were found. 

The mackerel fishers of Kinsdale {simple, but 

imaginative and often religious men, belonging to 

many nationalities — Irish, Scotch, French, and 

even German) have been deeply touched by the 

fate of the young lovers who, finding their love 

doomed by the hatred between their races, and 

[ 186 ] 


THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE 

nothing left to them in life, preferred death to 
separation, A few days ago they asked permission 
to bury the bodies, and yesterday they did so, 
choosing as the place of rest the summit of Cape 
Clear, which looks out on the Atlantic. To-day 
they have built over the spot a broad and lofty 
cairn, which will henceforth be the first thing seen 
by the passengers on the great liners who are com¬ 
ing in from the New World to the Old, and the 
last by those who are going out from the Old 
World to the New .—The Times. 

^^Love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as 
the grave. . . . Many waters cannot quench love, 
neither can the floods drown it.^’ 


[ 187 ] 



« 


( 




I 


































































































































































